Brussel waarschuwt Slowakije voor verdere uitsluiting van Roma (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission i has warned that proposals to setting-up boarding schools for Roma children in Slovakia - floated by the country's top politician - should not lead to further segregation of an already marginalised ethnic group.
Earlier this week (8 March), Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced his intention to create a programme that would "gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in the settlements."
By doing so, this would prevent the next generation of Roma from being unable to "integrate", Mr Fico said, adding that he expected criticism from human rights organisations.
Amnesty International has described the idea as a discriminatory attack on the Roma way of living. "Uprooting them from their surroundings and removing them from their families is an attack on their identity," the organisation said in a statement.
The European Commission has for its part warned against possible racial segregation.
"It would be probably better if the offer was made on an socio-economic basis rather than on racial grounds," the office of education commissioner Androulla Vassiliou i told EUobserver.
But in an apparent change of heart, the EU i's executive has not dismissed the idea of boarding schools in its entirety as long as attendance is voluntary and temporary.
"If the idea is to provide an extra educational support for a period of time to enable the pupils to catch up with others and then to be reintegrated into mainstream schools as soon as possible, that might be ok," commission official Karel Bartak said.
In 2004, the European Commission however expressed regrets over a similar suggestion tabled by its ambassador to Slovakia, Eric van der Linden.
Mr van der Linden said at the time: "It may sound simplistic, but we may have to, I'll say it in quotation marks, force Roma children to stay in a kind of boarding school from Monday morning until Friday afternoon, where they will continuously be subjected to a system of values that is dominant in our society." The envoy also spoke in favour of financial incentives for Roma parents.
The commission is nowadays more sensitive and understanding to member states dealing with the issue, the executive said when asked about the u-turn.
Some ten percent of Slovakia's 5.4 million people are Roma. Most of them live on the margins of society in squalid and isolated settlements, facing limited access to electricity, running water as well as proper health-care and education.