Roma now

Since the closures and privatisation of State-owned enterprises in the 1990s, the Roma encounter great difficulties to a place on the labour market. The crafts that they exercised are also more and more replaced by the industrialization and technology.

Social exclusion

Many Eastern European Roma are illiterate. They are missing because of this, often the access to facilities such as medical care. In addition they have frequently suffered from discrimination and social exclusion. As a result, many of them ended up on the edge of society, often in degrading conditions.

By the Eastern European governments are hardly paid attention to the bad socio-economic position of the Roma. The negative attitude of the local officials strengthened rather the marginalization of this population group. There are hundreds of examples where Roma were victims of racist violence, while going through police or Government was not intervened (see URwww.errc.org).