by Ryota Ochiai

Do you know “Roma”? Not Rome, but Roma. It might be confusing, so I write it as “Romani”. Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe. They are also called and known as “Gypsies”, maybe you have been heard that word. In 2007, the EU expanded in Central Europe, and as you know Bulgaria and Romania also have joined the EU. At the same time, we are recognizing that the Romani of 9 million constitute a “Fourth World” in the area. Moreover, Romani living in the EU are forced to survive the life in lower than standard necessary to still maintain human dignity.

Rumanian and Bulgarian of the Romani native place come over to the French city and suburbs, and they set up camping as the temporary house at there. In addition, most of them have not received school education and become the victim of  human trafficking networks. Such networks let elderly person and children beg by the roadside and forces daughters to prostitution and expands by doing an illegal act. Much camping was removed by a policy of the French Government, and the Romani of several hundred returned to Romania independently. However, this let the EU highlight a problem of “freedom of movement” written in the Treaties of the European Union. However, France is a country making much of “freedom of movement” from other countries because of experience shut in the other side of the Iron Curtain. Therefore France supported Bulgaria and EU participation of Romania at the very beginning.

However, since the freedom of the movement is valuable simply, France wants to take measures to prevent the crime network taking advantage of the poverty of Romani. This is what written down in EU treaty Article 3, and it means that the freedom of movement is not unlimited and this is carried out on one of the cooperation with “destruction measures criminal with prevention of crime”. In other words, the freedom of movement can never become the large-scale emigrant incurrent excuse.

Afterwards, France visited to Romania and agreed that both found a solution jointly. From there, the French thought, it is the most important that Romania and Bulgaria take responsibility for the own nation, since EU member states have a duty to protect the nation from own country. It is written down in Treaties of the European Union Article 2.

This problem is world and our problem not just a problem of the whole Romania, France and EU now. Most of people are irresponsibility about the issue of emigrant, however it is same to what add a new chapter to the sad history of the emigrant who has been oppressed. So I will be glad if even slightly many people are interested about the issue of emigrant by reading my blog post. Thank you.

References

France Roma Camps Demolished, Gypsies Forced Into Hiding http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/roma-france-camps-demolished-gypsies_n_1778357.html

The Romani People and the Free Movement Directive http://www.legalfrontiers.ca/2010/10/the-romani-people-and-the-free-movement-directive/

The Roma in France: “Is Hollande going to expel us all?” http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/world-affairs/2012/10/roma-france-hollande-going-expel-us-all

EU Treaties http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/decision-making/treaties/index_en.htm