Beyond Declarative Compliance? Limits of the EU Roma Framework to Address Antigypsyism on National and European Levels
摘要
Documented and analyzed by a wide range of academic studies, including many in this volume, after 2020, anti-Roma racism has become the focus of the National Roma Strategic Frameworks, elaborated in response to the renewed EU Roma Framework, adopted in 2020. Yet, the concrete measures included in these strategies typically emphasize reactive mechanisms (complaints, sanctioning discrimination) and vaguely defined “training” for selected professional groups. Drawing on the European Commission’s 2023 assessment of member-state frameworks and its 2024 implementation report, as well as selected national strategies (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czechia, Germany, and Spain), this chapter argues that current measures—however necessary—are largely insufficient to prevent structural, systemic, and everyday discrimination of Roma. The chapter proposes that validated types of interventions, with stronger prospects of sustainable impact, based on the bias-habit-breaking approach, followed by procedural redesign with accountability, are taken into consideration for both future policies and research. The chapter cautions against approaches likely to underperform or backfire, such as moralizing one-off awareness workshops, reliance on self-reported attitudinal changes, or implying outcomes from well-intended activities instead of collecting evidence of behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, it argues that merely reactive measures are not enough to address deeply rooted and historically stabilized antigypsyism. Preventive approaches, focusing on both changing hearts and minds of the majority as well as introducing institutional reforms, are needed to address anti-Roma racism effectively. It also argues that policies, institutional procedures, and projects, especially those receiving EU funding, should be checked, not just for declaring compliance with the EU’s anti-racism focus but also for acknowledging and mitigating the risks of unintentionally reproducing subtle and structural racism. The substantial participation of Roma civil society and experts is pivotal for the success of these policy redesign and specification processes. Romani Studies could therefore focus more, besides continuing to analyze manifestations of antigypsyism, on closely analyzing the design and, especially, the implementation of policies aimed at combating antigypsyism, and on identifying the most effective types of interventions that can be promoted and scaled up.