Italy, the Roma Camps and Millions of Euro spent

Date 22 January 2014 Author Roma React Category Uncategorised

The Municipalities of Rome, Milan and Naples spent over 100 million euro for the Roma Camps. But for the EU is not enough.

42 Million of euro for the Roma Camps. This is the amount of money that the Municipality of Rome spent in 3 years in order to maintain the Roma settlements with about 7.000 Roma that are living in the city of Rome. If we also count the amounts spent by the Municipalities of Milan and Naples we arrive to 100 million of euro spent on Roma Inclusion, without having no one concrete results or improvement of the Roma conditions in Italy.

The Ministry for Integration, Cecilie Kyenge, visit the Roma camp located in Via Gordiani, in the east suburbs of Rome. The visit close the sixth International Conference of CAHROM, a Commission of 47 experts of Council of Europe that are working on solutions to end the discrimination on Roma communities. The Commission underline that "Italy, together with France, is the only one country having the Roma settlements."

The European Union said that the Italian government doesn't want to resolve the problems of Roma Communities. The Italian authorities said that they are investing 100 Million Euro on Roma Inclusion. The real question is: how you are investing this money? Which kind of indicators you have in order to evaluate the investment?

From the point of view of the CAHROM experts "Italy don't need special or temporary solutions or "ghetto" solutions, but projects of social inclusion, housing inclusion and employment inclusion."

The local and national authorities, as they said and promised, are working to find a solution for the condition of Roma in Italy. We are still waiting for our "Godot" living in the same conditions…

Note from RomaReact based on the OHNCR report "In Europe´s Roma Gettos" made by Valeriu Nicolae

"More recently, however, there have been some promising developments. The new Government’s Minister for Integration, Cécile Kyenge – Italy’s first black Minister – has declared her commitment to a policy of integration of Roma, not segregation. Italian diplomats are now openly saying that their country was wrong to label the Roma as “nomads” and to place them in segregated camps. How fast this will trickle down to the local level is difficult to say. But in Rome itself, there are some grounds for hope as well. In the end, Mayor Alemanno lost the election and his successor, Ignazio Marino, indicated his will to change his policies in line with the Government’s new approach."