After 1989: freedom, poverty and segregation
The fall of communism brings Roma political freedom but also mass unemployment, racist violence and segregation in housing and schools, which EU programmes and court rulings have only partly reduced.
- Roma in 10 European Countries: Main Results (Roma Survey 2021) — European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2022)
- Roma equality, inclusion and participation in the EU — European Commission
- D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic (Grand Chamber judgment) — European Court of Human Rights (2007)
- The East European Gypsies: Regime Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics — Zoltan Barany, Cambridge University Press (2002)
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
- Resolution of 15 April 2015 on the occasion of International Roma Day: anti-Gypsyism in Europe and EU recognition of the memorial day of the Roma genocide during World War II — European Parliament (2015)
When communism collapsed, Roma could organise, publish and vote, and Romani parties and NGOs appeared across the region. But many Roma lost the factory and farm jobs that had kept them afloat, and in the scramble of the 1990s they were often the first to be laid off and the last hired. Racist violence surged: skinhead attacks in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, pogroms in Romanian villages such as Hădăreni in 1993, and in Hungary in 2008–09 a series of attacks by a far-right gang that killed six Roma, including a five-year-old boy.
- The East European Gypsies: Regime Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics — Zoltan Barany, Cambridge University Press (2002)
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
Segregation became the most visible problem. Romani children were sent disproportionately to “special schools” for children with learning disabilities; in D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic (2007), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this was discrimination. Yet in the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s 2021 survey, 52% of Romani children aged 6–15 in the countries surveyed attended schools where all or most pupils were Roma, and 80% of Roma lived below their country’s poverty threshold, compared with 17% of the general EU population.
- D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic (Grand Chamber judgment) — European Court of Human Rights (2007)
- Roma in 10 European Countries: Main Results (Roma Survey 2021) — European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2022)
After EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007, many Roma from Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia moved west, meeting new hostility: Italy declared a “nomad emergency” in 2008, and France expelled thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma in 2010. The EU now has a Roma strategic framework for 2020–2030, and Europe’s estimated 10–12 million Roma, about six million of them in the EU, remain its largest ethnic minority.
- Roma equality, inclusion and participation in the EU — European Commission
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
The core problem is antigypsyism, a specific racism against Roma, built into housing, schooling, policing and employment. Inclusion programmes fail when they treat Roma as a problem to be fixed rather than as citizens denied equal rights, and when Roma are not part of designing them.
- Roma in 10 European Countries: Main Results (Roma Survey 2021) — European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2022)
- Resolution of 15 April 2015 on the occasion of International Roma Day: anti-Gypsyism in Europe and EU recognition of the memorial day of the Roma genocide during World War II — European Parliament (2015)
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
EU and national strategies since the 2000s have invested in education, housing and employment; some indicators, such as early childhood education, have improved. But the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency finds little change in poverty and growing school segregation in some countries.
- Roma in 10 European Countries: Main Results (Roma Survey 2021) — European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2022)
- Roma equality, inclusion and participation in the EU — European Commission
Why it matters today
This is the world most Roma in Europe live in now. Many face poverty, segregated settlements, separate schools and everyday hostility; others have built middle-class lives, often hiding their identity at work. Debates about Roma migrants in Western Europe, and politicians who campaign against "Gypsy crime", keep the issue raw.