Romania's Roma Strategy Draws Cool Response

The centre-left government of Prime Minister Victor Ponta has approved a new five-year strategy designed to bring about the social inclusion of members of the marginalised Roma community.

It aims to address key issues related to education, health, employment and housing for this impoverished section of society.

The action plan covers the period 2015 to 2020 and follows a similar document adopted five years ago.

Around 430.5 million lei (95 million euro) has been set aside for the strategy's implementation. Some of the money is coming from the European Social Fund and other EU sources.

Representatives of the Roma community say they are not satisfied with the assessment of ways to address the situation, saying the document is unclear, however.

"The strategy still lacks a clear presentation of the way the government is to budget, monitor and evaluate the planned measures," a coalition of eight Roma organizations said in a joint statement.

The group added that while the strategy sounded generous in intention, clear numbers and effective ways for improving the situation of the Roma remained absent.

Roma activists say too little money was spent over the last decade on the integration of Roma people to have real effect.

There are no official statistics on this. Rough estimates are that some 250 million euro were spent on the Roma community in Romania over the decade.

The Roma community in Romania is the largest in Europe. It officially numbers around 620,000 in the country of 20.5 million

However, it is widely believed that there are actually at least twice that many Roma in the country. Many people of Roma origin do not declare their ethnicity in censuses due to the widespread prejudice that they face. The...