Modelos de protección jurídica y social de la minoría "Roma" en la Unión EuropeaLas minorías étnicas a debate

Abstract

The advances of European Union Law and legislation on the protection of ethnic and national minorities in recent decades, timid but determined, contrasts with the difficult situation of exclusion and marginalization suffered by the Roma ethnicity in the current European context. A fact on which the governments of the European Union have acted with little force in the last decades, without having succeeded in finding effective and definitive solutions. This calls powerful our attention. On the one hand, we are talking about the largest ethnic minority in Europe, which in some Eastern countries reaches up to eighty percent of its population, as in the case of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. On the other hand, it is a community thatlives below the threshold of poverty, with a life expectancy fifteen years less than the whole population. This is a piercing fact that, unfortunately, is widespread in practically all the Member States of the Union.It is precisely because of the legal and social relevance of the subject and its impact on the systems of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the European and international context that we consider it meritorious, through the present work, to make a comprehensive analysis of the models of protection and institutional recognition of the Roma minority existing in the European Union. To this end, we will analyze the degree of commitment of the main Community institutions to make progress in protecting the rights of the Roma minority, within the EU investigating, among other assumptions, the possible existence of a common policy to combat discrimination against Roma; together with the implementation, for this purpose, of specific financial measures, at national and local level, within the Community framework