Roma MEP Urges Commission to Act for Her People

The first ever Roma Member of the European Parliament has urged the European Commission to start a concerted effort to improve living conditions for her people. Livia Jaroka, the 29-year old Hungarian MEP from Roma origin, said that Brussels has been "very good at pressuring the new EU member states" to address the Roma issue, but that it had "failed to take concrete action itself." Jaroka was elected last June as the first and only MEP of Roma origin for the centre-right Hungarian party Fidesz.

Roma, or gypsies, often face poverty, discrimination, unemployment, bad housing and poor access to health care. EU membership has only very partly resolved these problems, Jaroka said. "The new EU countries have been very good at satisfying the wishes of Brussels, adopting formal anti-discrimination legislation, but Roma people do not actually feel the effect of it." Jaroka has urged the EU to be more involved with the actual daily fate of the Roma people and create a body which monitors and investigates the actual living situations of Roma. She called for a "Roma head office," to be formed at the highest EU level within the Commission.