News

In the Newsletter of Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance Amalipe,  Issue from 12/2011,  was announced that at its meeting on 21 December 2011, the Council of Ministers adopted a National Strategy for Roma Integration, Action Plan and Annex ‘Programs for Implementation of NSRI’. We promised to provide a follow-up analysis of the adopted documents in the January Newsletter. In mid-January, Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner of Justice, criticized 8 countries for their failure to  submit their National Roma Integration Strategies to the European Commission, Bulgaria being one of them. Has Bulgaria actually elaborated its Strategy and what is happening that it has not yet been submitted to Brussels for consideration?

As mentioned, on 21.12.2011 the Strategy was adopted by the Council of Ministers as an ‘importer’, i.e. the Secretariat of NCCEII has taken on the responsibility to make the necessary corrections agreed on at the session of Ministers. The Council of Ministers Decision in question is Decision № 1/05.01.2012.  In it, two things make an impression. First, that the Strategy will be proposed for approval to the National Assembly. This was one of the basic demands set by Amalipe and actually all Romani organizations as early as mid-October 2011 at the conference in the town of Sliven (http://www.amalipe.com/index.php?nav=news&id=935&lang=1 ). Embracing this idea is undoubted mark of political determination to set the issue of Roma Integration at high level. At the same time, in the Decision of the Council of Ministers, the Strategy and Action Plan have been included, but the Annex ‘Programs for the Implementation of NSRI’ which is the most concrete constituent of the document package, with clear deadlines and funding sources is missing and without it the implementation of the Strategy will be an utopia. The Annex has been suggested by Roma NGOs during the October conferences, it has been approved by the Interdepartmental Working Group preparing the Strategy. Afterwards, it was submitted for consideration to the Council of Ministers, received support from the majority of Ministries (in the “co-ordination procedure”, no substantial objections have been marked out) and at the Council of Ministers meeting no objections have been made. Despite all this, the Annex was not included in the Council of Ministers Decision № 1 / 5.01.2012.

Roma organizations that took part in the Interdepartmental Working Group, set out their concerns about Decision 1/05.01.2012 in a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Tsvetanov. At a meeting, held a 23.01, the Deputy Prime Minister said that the omission of the Annex ‘Programs for Implementation of the NSRI’ from the Council of Ministers Decision is due to administrative error subject to corrigendum via resubmitting the Annex for consideration at the Council of Ministers.  This is envisaged to happen at the beginning of February. The Deputy Minister agreed on the submission of the Strategy Implementation Annual Report to the National Assembly (not solely to NCCEII as provided for in Decision 1/05.01.2012).

Meanwhile, the National Strategy for Roma Integration was submitted to the National Assembly and received surprisingly swift approval by seven committees. It was either unanimously approved or by a small minority of abstentions. The Committee on Education reviewed the proposal of Amalipe that the NSRI implementation be reported annually to the National Assembly, by approving and including it in the Committee proposal agenda (http://parliament.bg/bg/parliamentarycommittees/members/232/steno/ID/2333).

The document (Strategy without Action Plan) is expected to be subject to voting by Parliament in February.
Meanwhile, European Commission experts began evaluating applications of submitted National Roma Integration Strategies. The first conclusions and recommendations will be discussed at the meeting of the European Roma Platform (estimated date - 22 March) and will be presented to Parliament at the end of April.