Enforcement of the anti-Racism legislation of the European Union against antigypsyism

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) became a pioneer of the promotion of human rights and democratic values especially during the last decades. However, the members of the EU are not immune from the human rights violations including the areas of “equality” and “non-discrimination” that are related to racism, discrimination and xenophobia. “Antigypsyism”, a form of racism, is among the most challenging human rights areas for the member states despite all recent initiatives. In this research, the use of EU competences to combat antigypsyism is analysed with case studies. It is argued that the use of the competences is limited.

KEYWORDS:

• The European Union
• institutional racism
• discrimination
• antigypsyism
• Roma
• the European Commission

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge my supervisor and committee members and two referees for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The article is derived from my doctoral dissertation submitted to Marmara University in 2017.

2 “Roma” means “people” in Romanes and used as an umbrella term in this research to include Sinti, Travellers, Gens du Voyage, Dom, Lom and other communities.

3 500 in 2010, 9,396 in 2011, 11,803 in 2012, 21,537 in 2013, 14,449 in 2014 and 11,538 in 2015 (Fundamental Rights Agency 2013, 2014b, 2016).