Roma, on Move, Test Europe’s ‘Open Borders’
Roma children play in front of a building in the Bucharest Roma suburb of Ferentari.
By SUZANNE DALEY
BUCHAREST, Romania — This city is full of stark, Soviet-era housing blocks, and the grimmest among them — gray towers of one-room apartments with communal bathrooms and no hot water — are given over to the Roma population.
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Dispute Grows Over France’s Removal of Roma Camps (September 17, 2010)
Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
Children reflected in a puddle of water in Ferentari, a suburb of Bucharest inhabited mostly by Roma.
Roma like Maria Murariu, 62, who tends to her dying husband in a foul-smelling room no bigger than a jail cell. She has not found work in five years.
“There is not much for us in Romania,” she said recently, watching her husband sleep. “And now that we are in the European Union, we have the right to go to other countries. It is better there.”
Thousands of Romania’s Roma, also known as Gypsies, have come to a similar conclusion in recent years, heading for the relative wealth of Western Europe, and setting off a clash within the European Union over just how open its “open borders” are.
A summit meeting of European leaders on Thursday degenerated into open discord over how to handle the unwanted immigrants. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France vowed to keep dismantling immigrant camps and angrily rejected complaints from European Commission officials that the French authorities were illegally singling out Roma for deportation.
Migration within the 27 nations of the European Union has become a combustible issue during the economic downturn. The union’s latest expansion, which brought in the relatively poor nations of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, has renewed concern that the poor, traveling far from home in search of work, will become a burden on wealthier countries. The migration of the Roma is also raising questions about the obligations of Romania and Bulgaria to fulfill promises they made when they joined the union. Romania, for instance, mapped out a strategy for helping the Roma, but financed little of it. Mr. Sarkozy has demanded that the Romanian government do more to aid the Roma at home.
Much of Western Europe has reacted with hostility to itinerant Roma, who often have little education or practical skills. Some Roma have found marginal jobs collecting scrap iron or painting houses. But others have signed up for welfare or drifted into begging and petty thievery, living in unsightly camp sites.
In recent weeks, Mr. Sarkozy has tried to revive his support on the political right by deporting thousands of them, offering 300 euros, about $392, to those who go home voluntarily, and bulldozing their encampments.
The European Commission has threatened legal action against Paris over the deportation, calling it disgraceful and illegal.
The dispute peaked at lunch Thursday between Mr. Sarkozy and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the commission, the European Union’s executive body.
“There was a big argument — I could also say a scandal — between the president of the European Commission and the French president,” said the Bulgarian prime minister, Boyko Borisov, according to the Bulgarian daily Dnevnik.
Mr. Sarkozy denied a major rift, and remained unswayed. “We will continue to dismantle the illegal camps, whoever is there,” he said at a news conference. “Europe cannot close its eyes to illegal camps.”
Expulsions seem unlikely to offer a long-term solution. Many of the deported Roma are already planning their return.
Privately, some Romanian officials snicker over the French action. “They are just giving the Roma a paid vacation,” one official said.
Still, advocates for the Roma hope that the latest conflict will force the European Union to get serious about helping the Roma, who are openly reviled in most Eastern and Central European countries where they have lived in large numbers for centuries, most often under appalling conditions.
“There is nothing to focus the minds of policy makers like an army of poor people heading your way,” said Bernard Rorke, the director of Roma Initiatives for the nonprofit Open Society Foundation.
There is little reliable data on the Roma population. Originally from India, the Roma were virtual slaves until the 19th century, working for aristocrats and in monasteries.
When democracy took hold, they were freed. But they were landless, uneducated and dark-skinned, and they had few prospects.
Human rights activists say that Roma women are often sent to separate maternity wards. Their children, when they attend school, are frequently steered into classes for the mentally handicapped.
In Romania, one census counted 500,000 Roma. But some advocates say the number is closer to two million.
Those who make it out of abject poverty rarely admit their ancestry — a factor that makes it harder for Roma to combat the discrimination they face, advocates say.
In the years that Romania was negotiating to get into the European Union, it promised programs to help the Roma integrate into Romanian society.
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