Financial crisis ‘sparked anti-Roma feeling in Europe’

Androulla Vassiliou the European commissioner for culture, told Channel 4 News that uncertainty across Europe after the financial and sovereign debt crisis had given rise to anti-Roma sentiment, writes Matthew Moore.

Speaking at the launch of the EU “Creative Europe” programme, the commissioner said there was “a lot of discrimination in some of the member states”. In Slovakia this year a city mayor built a wall to separate Roma communities and Slovaks.

“When I heard about the building of walls in Slovakia to separate the Roma communities, it’s unacceptable and it doesn’t go with the values of the European Union. We cannot separate people.”

Commissioner Vassiliou said member states needed to do more to integrate Roma communities. “We have to give them they opportunities to develop and become part of the European community.”

Her comments come weeks after a four-year-old blonde girl was taken from a couple in Greece after police raiding a Roma camp noticed a lack of resemblance between the girl and a couple claiming to be her parents. The girl’s DNA matched that of a Bulgarian Roma couple who are now under investigation by police.

At around the same time a Roma girl in Dublin was taken from her parents by police after reports she was not the couple’s daughter. A DNA test later found she was biologically related to her parents.

Read more: UK Roma population one of biggest in Europe