Legacies of EU Conditionality: Explaining Post-Accession Adherence to Pre-Accession Rules on Roma

Abstract

This article explores the issue of post-accession adherence to EU conditions, looking at the case of the Roma. It asks why policies, institutions and programmes put in place by new member states in order to meet EU membership requirements and expectations remain in place after enlargement. It finds that EU conditions have had enduring effects because the key precipitating factors during the accession period almost all remain in some form after accession. These factors include EU attention and expectations, EU funding and capacity building, EU law, NGO advocacy and monitoring, other international programmes and commitments and pressures related to Roma migrants.

Notes

A version of this article was presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention, 17–20 February 2010, New Orleans, LA and the Association for the Study of Nationalities World Convention, 14–16 April 2011, Columbia University, NY. I would like to thank the Office of the Provost and the College of Social Sciences at California State University, Fresno for their support for this research.

¹It should be noted that some scholars (for example Hughes & Sasse 2003) reject the argument that the EU had a significant influence on the protection of Roma, especially when one evaluates implementation.

²These countries are Romania (with both the highest number and percentage of Roma), Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain. Data on the number of Roma vary widely, however, in large part due to unreliable census figures. For various reasons, including discrimination, Roma often do not classify themselves as such.

³Interview with Executive Officer, Legal Affairs/Human Rights in the EU, Amnesty International EU Office, Brussels, 23 July 2007.

⁴Interview with Pascale Charhon, Director, European Network against Racism (ENAR), Brussels, 24 July 2007.

⁵Interview with Monika Ladmanová, Programme Coordinator, Open Society Fund Czech Republic (OSF), Prague, Czech Republic, 4 December 2002.

⁶European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, ‘The European Union and Roma’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=518&langId=en, accessed 16 January 2010.

⁷European Commission, ‘Aide-Memoire for Desk-Officers: Roma and Structural Funds Programming 2007–2013’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/esf/docs/roma_en.pdf, p.1, accessed 2 March 2008.

⁸Amalipe Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance, ‘News: National Forum “The Structural Funds and the Roma Integration” took place in Sofia’, 4 December 2009 conference, available at: http://amalipe.com/en/?nav=news&id=220, accessed 4 January 2010.

⁹They addressed, respectively, the Roma situation (28 April 2005, P6_TA(2005)0151), Romani women (1 June 2006, P6_TA(2006)0244), freedom of movement and residence (15 November 2007, P6_TA(2007)0534), a European strategy on the Roma (31 January 2008, P6_TA (2008)0035), Italy’s census of the Roma (10 July 2008, P6_TA(2008)0361), labour market access (11 March 2009, P6_TA(2009)0117), the Second European Roma Summit (25 March 2010, P7_TA(2010)0085), the situation of Roma and freedom of movement in the EU (9 September 2010, P7_TA(2010)0312) and the EU Strategy on Roma Inclusion (9 March 2011, P7_TA(2011)0092) (resolutions available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu, accessed 20 March 2011).

¹⁰Resolutions available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu, accessed 20 March 2011.

¹¹European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, ‘Roma Summits’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=812&langId=en, accessed 4 January 2010.

¹²The Commission intended to hold a Roma Summit every two years; a second summit was held in Spain in April 2010 ‘as a key event of the Spanish Presidency of the Council’. A second ‘integrated Roma platform’ meeting was held in Brussels five months after the first, organised by the Commission with the new European Council Presidency, Sweden (European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, ‘Roma Summits’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main. jsp?catId=812&langId=e, accessed 4 January 2010). Two more Platform meetings followed in 2010, and the fifth European Platform for Roma Integration meeting was held in April 2011 in Budapest, Hungary (European Commission, ‘Platform for Roma Inclusion’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=761&langId=en, accessed 27 February 2011).

¹³In its latest survey (conducted in 2009), Decade Watch NGOs began to assess ‘impact’ rather than merely government ‘inputs’, and noted a significant gap between the two, even though some governments ‘increased their efforts to improve the situation of the Roma’ (Decade Watch 2010, p. 25). Assessments varied significantly by both country and sector, but NGOs found deficiencies in all countries in at least some Decade priority areas. The report also emphasised that an objective and comparative analysis of impact unfortunately remains impossible due to ‘significant data gaps’ (Decade Watch 2010, pp. 19–20).

¹⁴European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, ‘The European Union and Roma’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=518&langId=en, accessed 16 January 2010.

¹⁵Interview with Joachim Ott, Secretary of High Level Advisory Group on Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities and Their Full Labour Market Inclusion, European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Anti-Discrimination Policy Unit, Brussels, 19 July 2007.

¹⁶Member states likewise remain keenly aware of the EU’s continued attention. For example, as the head of the EU Section of the Czech Republic’s implementing agency for NGO grants indicated in mid-2007, ‘the European Commission is carefully watching how we deal with Roma issues’ and they always want to know how the funds have affected Roma (interview with Petra Francova, Head of EU Section, NROS (Civil Society Development Foundation), Prague, Czech Republic, 11 July 2007).

¹⁷European Commission, EU Calendar, ‘Structural Funds & Roma Integration: Conference’, available at: http://europa.eu/eucalendar/event.shtml?eventId=1239118, accessed 4 January 2010. Seminars with the same objective continued in Hungary and three cities in Romania in 2010, and were planned for three cities in Bulgaria in 2011 (European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, ‘Events’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=518&langId=en&eventsId= 324&furtherEvents=yes, accessed 27 February 2011).

¹⁸EURoma, ‘About EURoma: History’, available at: http://www.euromanet.eu/about/history.html, accessed 4 January 2010.

¹⁹‘Transnational Cooperation on Roma Community and Social Exclusion New Opportunities for the Upcoming Period of Structural Funds (2007–2013)’, Madrid, 7–8 June 2007, available at: http://www.transnazionalita.it/file/Briefing%20and%20further%20steps.doc, accessed 23 January 2010.

²⁰The NSRFs outline a country’s strategy for use of Structural Funds and propose operational programmes.

²¹European Commission (2008a, pp. 10–11); Danova (2008); EURoma, ‘Romania, Structural Funds and Roma’, available at: http://www.euromanet.eu/facts/ro/39216.html, accessed 6 January 2010.

²²Interview with Karel Novak, Director, Social Integration Programmes, People in Need Foundation, Prague, Czech Republic, 12 July 2007. People in Need’s ‘Field Social Work Programmes in Neighbourhoods Threatened by Social Exclusion’ were included as a best practice example in the Czech Republic’s 2004–2006 National Action Plan for Social Inclusion and was the first best practices example in a new member state to be reviewed as part of the multilateral Peer Review in Social Inclusion process (under the Open Method of Coordination). While peer countries indicated that the programme was ‘carrying out invaluable work’ (Minev 2005, p. 31), they noted that the programme was only able to minimise harm to the Romani population (preventing the situation from becoming worse) rather than actually achieving social inclusion (Minev 2005).

²³European Commission, ‘European Union and Roma: Funding and Projects’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=634&langId=en, accessed 4 January 2010.

²⁴European Commission, ‘European Union and Roma: Funding and Projects’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=634&langId=en, accessed 4 January 2010.

²⁵ERIO, ‘Projects: Enhancing Romani Awareness’, available at: http://erionet.org/site/basic100010.html, accessed 1 February 2010; European Commission, ‘Call DG EAC 68/04—NGO Projects Granted in 2005’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/citizenship/pdf/doc435_en.pdf, accessed 3 February 2010.

²⁶Interview with Joachim Ott, Secretary of High Level Advisory Group on Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities and their full labour market inclusion, European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Anti-Discrimination Policy Unit, Brussels, 19 July 2007.

²⁷European Council, ‘Conclusions of the Presidency, Copenhagen, 21–22 June 1993’, DOC SN 180/93.

²⁸European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, ‘The European Union and Roma’, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=518&langId=en, accessed 16 January 2010.

²⁹Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/, accessed 20 March 2011.

³⁰The Czech Republic did not adopt a law to transpose the Directive until June 2009.

³¹For example, in December 2008, a Romani woman in Lithuania claiming employment discrimination won the first case testing the country’s new Law on Equal Opportunities (implementing the Race Directive). Interestingly, the lawyer, NGO representative and Equal Opportunities Ombudsman Office representative involved in this case had all participated in a two-year EU-funded training programme on the Race and Employment Equality Directives (Samuolyte 2009, pp. 17–18). A 2006 judgment on Roma segregation in education in Hungary was deemed ‘a ground braking [sic] development in anti-discrimination litigation across the EU. Being the first decision in which a domestic court—flawlessly applying relevant Community law—found against a local government for failing to address racial segregation, it sets a promising precedent for the Roma community’ (Farkas 2006).

³²For example, in addition to cases it won in Bulgarian courts, the European Roma Rights Centre won its sixth case against Bulgaria on behalf of Roma at the European Court of Human Rights in January 2010 (ERRC 2010).

³³On the problem of the tenuous links of NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe with their own societies and their dependence on foreign donors, see for example Fagan (2005) and Mendelson and Glenn (2002). In the Roma case, organised interest representation also does not suggest mobilisation of the masses or a broad-based civil society. This has not prevented some international NGOs and Roma activists from being involved and influential in the adoption and implementation of EU rules (Ram 2010).

³⁴Supporting such NGO activity was clearly in the interest of the Commission, as it enabled NGOs to take on a critique of governments that would be politically difficult for the Commission (Ram 2011, pp. 231–32).

³⁵Governments generally appear to accept these assessments. The Bulgarian government even has a paragraph from the 2007 report (including its critical points) on its page on the EURoma website (Danova 2008, p. 24; EURoma, ‘Bulgaria’, available at: http://www.euromanet.eu/facts/bg/index.html, accessed 6 January 2010).

³⁶It issued four new country reports in April 2007 on ‘Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma’ in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Serbia (Open Society Institute, EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program 2007).

³⁷Spolu, ‘ERGO Network’, available at: http://www.spolu.nl/stichting/our-partners/ergo-network/, accessed 1 February 2010; ERGO, ‘Mission of the ERGO Network’, available at: http://www.ergonetwork.org/, accessed 1 February 2010.

³⁸ERIO, ‘ERIO Network Members’, 30 November 2009, available at: http://erionet.org/site/basic100089.html, accessed 1 February 2010.

³⁹EU Roma Policy Coalition, ‘Towards an EU Roma Strategy’, available at: http://roma.wieni.be/eu-roma-strategy, accessed 15 January 2010. The coalition members are Amnesty International, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), the European Roma Grassroots Organisation (ERGO), the European Roma Information Office (ERIO), the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Minority Rights Group International, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and Spolu International Foundation.

⁴⁰Roma Civic Alliance, ‘About Roma Civic Alliance’, available at: www.acrr.ro, accessed 9 March 2009.

⁴¹EU Roma Policy Coalition, ‘Towards an EU Roma Strategy’, available at: http://roma.wieni.be/eu-roma-strategy, accessed 15 January 2010.

⁴²EU Roma Policy Coalition, ‘NGOs Want Results from First EU “Roma Summit”’, 16 September 2008, available at: http://roma.wieni.be/news/article/ngos-want-results-first-eu-roma-summit, accessed 15 January 2010.

⁴³Albania, Bosnia & Hercegovina and Spain joined later.

⁴⁴Members are Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.

⁴⁵As I previously wrote, ‘the EU paid little attention to the Roma until they began seeking asylum in Western Europe, and EU members began to recognize that indeed the Roma pose a potential threat to regional stability through massive emigration if their rights are not protected at home’ (Ram 2003, p. 49). The EU was concerned not only about an increase in migrants but that the very existence of ‘asylum seekers’ from candidate countries suggested that those countries were not protecting their rights (as required by EU membership). Concerns about Romani migration, intertwined with minority rights norms and NGO advocacy, brought about a shift in EU policy regarding the Roma (Ram 2010).

⁴⁶Roma Virtual Network, ‘Czech Republic: Roma Exodus Provokes Diplomatic Conflict’, Online Bulletin, 31 July 2009.