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“The EU-Framework for National Roma Strategies: Visions and Realities, Opportunities and Challenges for Roma Integration in Central and Southeast Europe”, was held on 2-3 May, 2012 in Prague, Czech Republic. Bulgaria was represented by Momchil Baev from Center Amalipe and Maria Metodieva from OSI – Sofia.

The conference was an opening event in a long-term European Liberal Forum project regarding the Roma challenges in the EU. The aim of the project is to formulate policy recommendations for ALDE fraction in the European Parliament as they believe that the situation of Roma minorities is deteriorating and needs more political attention both on national and EU level.

The opening workshop (round table) gathered experts from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, Netherlands and Italy who provided reports on the current situation. Comparative perspective will be used in order to identify possible opportunities to act on both national and EU levels. The concrete output of the workshop will be a draft policy paper (edited by Will Guy, Bristol University). A moderator of the workshop was Dr. Ivan Gabal (GAC), Czech Republic. The workshop was moderated according to Chatham House Rules with no media outcome.

The experts from the different countries shared similar experience in collaborating with the state officials trying to influence them on the development of the National Roma integration strategy. Another thing in common was that almost in every country the state officials were quite reluctant in adopting suggestions from the civil society including NGOs. Such was the case in Slovakia, Mr. Marek Balaz says. His NGO submitted 77 comments on the draft of the document and all of them were ignored except for a few based on language issues.

Similar was the situation in Hungary. Mr. Peter Kreko from the Political Capital Institute presented strongly grim picture of the highly intolerant Hungarian society. His observations were supported by a survey that showed clear data on how unaccepted are Roma in the Hungarian society and that Roma is the least accepted and tolerated minority in Hungary compared to Jews, homosexuals and other ethnic and social minorities. Another negative tendency in Hungary and throughout Europe was that many political leaders are misusing and abusing the Roma issue as they are trying to pursue political success through people’s negative perceptions.

On behalf of Center Amalipe Momchil Baev presented an overview of the National Strategy of Republic of Bulgaria for Roma Integration with its positive and negative sides. Baev underlined that it is a very good sign that the Strategy was adopted by the National Assembly in Bulgaria and that sends a signal of good political will and puts the Roma integration high on the political agenda of the government.

Abreast with that Momchil Baev stressed on the weaknesses of the Strategy. The main one is the monitoring part. The Chapter “Monitoring the implementation” leaves the entire monitoring within the frames of the so-called administrative monitoring” that is rather reporting than monitoring. NGOs and experts demanded additional mechanisms (as shadow reporting, community monitoring, etc.), but they were not included in the final version. What the Strategy proposes is far from the robust monitoring system required by EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies.

Another issue that Baev spoke on was the funding of the different activities that are envisioned in the Action Plan to the National Roma Integration Strategy.

The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies requires “sufficient funding from national budgets, which will becomplemented, where appropriate, by international and EU funding”.

• Most of the priority fields are not backed up with financing or this is financing that has been approved before NRIS and without links to its approval and implementation.
  
  In this term, the added value of the Strategy and its Action plan is very limited.
• In fact, 71 out of 120 activities in the Action plan are not budgeted (as shown in the table below).  
• The “Funds” boxes are empty, or with information “no financing is necessary”.

• Level of financing is far from enough.
• Almost no new activities and budget are planned. The Health care priority is copy-paste version from the Action plan for implementing the Health Strategy for Persons Belonging to Vulnerable Ethnic Minorities, approved by the Council of Ministers in July 2011 (CoM Decision 589/01.08.2011).
• Some of the conclusions and recommendations that Momchil Baev gave in the name of Center Amalipe included
• The necessity of Logical frame of indicators for measuring the implementation of the NRIS to be prepared and approved.
• Establishment of mechanisms for independent monitoring (outside the scope of the administrative monitoring) is also needed.
• It is necessary normative documents that transmit the Strategy into concrete obligations and responsibilities of the main institutions to be prepared.  
• Mechanism for engaging Managing authorities of the operational program and the Rural Areas Development Program with the implementation of NRIS should be established at central level.
• The Interdepartmental Working group for provisionof resources for Roma integration, chaired by the Minister of EU Funds Management is good step forward in this direction, it should be further developed.
• In addition, special steps are necessary to ensure that key points from the NRIS are incorporated in the National Development Program “Bulgaria 2020” and in the Operational programs / Rural Areas Development Program for the next planning period.
• The Action Plan does not meet the requirements of the European Commission as well as the needs of Roma integration policy in Bulgaria since it fails to plan activities and resources for fulfilling the tasks.
• The Plan needs certain fundamental changes and amendments. Approving the Appendix “Programs for implementation of the NRIS” (which status is unclear at present) is first step in this direction.  
• Employment priority needs to be extended to Employment and Social Inclusion.
• Housing priority needs to incorporate much more ambitious activities.
• Preparing strong Logical frame of indicators should be done in the coming months. It has to include not only output indicators but also outcome and impact ones.  
• Countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia should have a specific Axis “Integration of marginalized communities and Roma” in Operational programs such as Human resources, Rural development etc. because measures don’t have specific funding.
• Linkage between different funds for the next programming period.
• Roma integration to be conditionality for applying for EU funds.
• Center Amalipe prepared a paper on the NSRI that was submitted to DG JUST in February this year. The paper can be found on Amalipe’s website www.amalipe.com