Fight against Roma Discrimination

Abstract

This chapter scrutinizes the IOR between the EU and the COE in combating Roma discrimination. Europe’s biggest ethnic minority is worth examining, since it shows how the EU has expanded its interest in human rights issues since 2000. While the COE had been one of the first and preeminent European organizations addressing Roma since the early 1990s, the issues surrounding Roma only became internally important for the EU in 2004. This chapter sheds light on the questions of how the COE reacted to the new EU activities (fear of duplication) and whether the EU is reinventing the wheel or if the EU incorporates what is already in existence in Strasbourg. Before looking into these issues in depth, the subsequent section starts out by introducing Europe’s biggest ethnic minority and tackling the COE’s and the EU’s role in fighting Roma discrimination.