An Opportunity: FUEN, the Ally of Europe's Roma

"In the Third Reich, we Jewish people were regarded as subhuman beings. Today it's the gypsies – although they are not openly called subhuman beings, that is how they are thought of an treated."

(Ernst Tugendhat, German-Jewish philosopher and member of the Society for Threatened Peoples advisory board.)

Table of contents

1.) Europe's largest national minority

2.) Repressed, despised, discriminated against, persecuted

3.) Europe's largest minority demands self-determination

4.) Comprehensive integration program from the EU Commission for Roma in Europe

5.) European minorities need language and nationality rights as well as forms of autonomy

6.) The FUEN: Advocate and lobby for the Roma in Europe

Representatives of the four national minorities in Germany (Sorbs, Danish, Frisians and Sinti and Roma) and of other European and Russian communities discussed possibilities to keep their identity and culture, to strengthen their ethnic group members’ self-confidence and to keep learning and using their language - despite increasing globalisation.

About 180 represantives of minorities from all over Europe and Russia, political decision-makers, scientists and civil-rights activists were expected to the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) congress in Eisenstadt, which took place from the first to the fourth of June and was arranged in coorperation with the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). With 86 member organisations in 32 countries the FUEN is the largest umbrella organisation of autochthonal, national minorities in Europe.

One key aspect of the congress was the improvement of the Roma’s situation.

With around twelve million members the Roma are one of the largest minorities in Europe and live in many countries. The STP deplores that the Roma often are victims of racially motivated attacks especially in East Europe. Most of them live in isolated Ghettos and their children are placed in special schools. The STP accuses the French and the Italian heads of government to knowingly contributing to growing discrimination against this minority and to intolerance of the majority population. Therefore the congress participants called in a joint appeal on european institutions to do more for the realisation of minority rights in the individual countries.

In Germany the STP fights for Roma refugees from Kosovo.

About half of the 20.000 Roma refugees in Germany are at risk to be deported. The Roma have lived in Germany for many years and among them are a lot of children and youths who were born and raised in Germany and do not have any relation to their parents’ country of origin.

In Kosovo the Roma people, the Ashkali and the "Kosovo-Egyptians" live in miserable conditions on the margin of society, they face severe discrimination and are not protected against attacks. Since the end of Kosovo war in 1999 nationalist Albanians destroyed 70 of the 75 Roma settlements, while the NATO troops were mostly inactively present. Roma and Ashkali were beaten, tortured, raped, abducted and disappeared. Thousands had to flee.