A Decade After ‘Roma Inclusion’: ‘Radicalization’ of the Deep-Frozen Lambs in Europe’s Fridge

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the end of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2015) in Europe, and the general shift in the EU’s Roma, migrant and security policies. It is time to address the question of how the failure of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, the terrorist attacks in France and the European refugee crisis were used for stigmatization of 12 million Roma as vulnerable to radicalization, and who benefited from this.  

While in 2015, Western Europe was facing an acute refugee crisis, caused by the wars in the Middle East, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which are not attractive to migrants, but have growing Roma (Gypsy) populations, decided to take advantage of the situation; they convinced Brussels to give them even more money to fund their bloated repressive apparatuses, and to silence their civil societies. No human rights considerations mattered. Security above all, but whose security?  

Thus, the institutional legitimisation of Anti-Gypsyism and Xenophobia in those countries, situated in the path of the refugee flows, set the stage for the rise to power of the far-right political forces even before the 2019 COVID pandemic and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this sense, the events in Eastern Europe were a warning of what awaited the Western world, but 10 years ago no one believed that what was happening in Budapest, Sofia and Bucharest was possible in Washington, Brussels and Berlin. 

2015 Terrorist attacks in France

The year 2015 will be remembered for the series of terrorist attacks in France that horrified the Western public – beginning with the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January and ending with the November Paris attacks, with totally over 140 dead and over 400 injured throughout the year. A very important consequence of these attacks is the increase of public suspicion and intolerance towards migrants, refugees and Roma. Indicative in this respect was the refusal of the French courts in 2015 to condemn French Prime Minister Manuel Valls for his statement in 2013 that Bulgarian and Romanian Roma should return to Bulgaria and Romania, i.e. they have no place in France. 

The importance of France in defining the EU’s “Roma policy”

As one of the major European powers with decisive influence in the EU, and especially in the Council of Europe (based in the French city of Strasbourg), France has had less visible but tangible interventions in European Roma affairs. Suffice it to mention that the 1971 First World Roma Congress was originally planned to be held in Paris, but due to the hostile attitude of the French authorities, the congress was organised in Britain. This makes even more strange the sudden change in France’s position (from blocking to approving) on the 2001 initiative of the Finish President Tarja Halonen to create a European Roma Forum as a representative political body of Roma people in Europe, the first of its kind. 

The fate of the European Roma and Travellers Forum

Moreover, French government proposed the forum to be hosted in Strasbourg and to use the Council of Europe premises on condition that the word “Travellers” is added to its name (France does not recognise the existence of minorities but treats Roma as “gens du voyage” or “travelling people”). In 2004, one year before the official launch of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, the Council of Europe signed a cooperation agreement with the European Roma and Travellers Forum, which provided the financial means for its existence. The purpose of this article is not to examine the activities of the forum itself, but to highlight that it was conceived as a representative institution, not only “Roma-led” but elected by Roma, a possible future “Roma parliament”, similar to Parliaments of Sámi people in Norway and Finland.  

Europe’s Roma need Art and Culture Institute

In 2014 the Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland decided to terminate the agreement with ERTF and to embrace the idea of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) president George Soros that Roma need a European institute for culture – a distant echo of the old demands at the dawn of the Roma movement, a century earlier, for Roma educational and cultural institutions in Europe, such as a Roma Academy of Sciences and Roma University. 

This came at a time when the Decade of Roma Inclusion was heading for failure, anti-Roma attacks in Eastern Europe were on the rise, and deportations of Roma from France were continuing, despite the scandal involving French President Sarkozy in 2010. At the same time, France was facing a growing terrorist threat and was reluctant to encourage further political empowerment of Roma in Europe, which could potentially bring more headaches and disunity among EU member states. So, replacing the ERTF with a cultural institute, whose board would be formed at the suggestion of the CoE and the OSF, was welcomed. On 15 September 2015, 47 member states of the Council of Europe endorsed the proposal to create European Institute for Roma Arts and Culture (ERIAC). It was officially launched in Berlin two years later. What was the reason for this paradigm shift? This is a question for the participants in these events, a decade later, when the results of the decisions taken then can be better assessed.

Replacing resistance with conformism

The link between the end of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, French response to terrorism, and the prioritisation of Roma arts and culture over the fight against racism is crucial to understanding Hungary’s position, as this is the country where the idea that ‘Roma inclusion’ could be achieved within 10 years was first announced by the World Bank and the Open Society Foundations at a 2003 conference under the patronage of the Hungarian Prime Minister. Ethnic tensions in Hungary have been extremely high since 2008-2009, following a series of racist murders of Roma, including a five-year-old child. In the following years, these tensions periodically escalated, and in 2015 the Hungarian authorities saw an opportunity to turn the paradigm in their favour by suggesting that once the Decade of Roma Inclusion had failed, the Roma people could be radicalized in the same way as second- and third-generation migrants in France. 

This logic betrays the fear of Hungarian, and Eastern European political elites in general, of Roma discontent. A fear that explains why all those who talk about political mobilization of Roma and resistance to Anti-Gypsyism have been isolated in the last 10 years, and the way has been cleared for Roma sending the “right messages” – extreme individualism, conformism, escapism and alienation from community problems – everything that prevents people from organising into effective movements to oppose emerging fascism. 

The role of Hungary a month after the end of the Decade of Roma Inclusion

On 19 October 2015, in Brussels, the Hungarian Minister of Justice, László Trócsányi, declared 12 million Roma in Europe “a possible target of radicalization”, without supporting his claim with any facts or evidence – just a month after the official closing of the Decade of Roma Inclusion in Sarajevo on 11 September 2015. This statement was made during a high-level conference of EU justice ministers, organized by the European Commission and the EU Presidency of Luxemburg in response to increasing terrorist attacks by foreign fighters in Europe. The labelling of all Roma as vulnerable to radicalization took place in the presence of the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Věra Jourová, 13 Justice Ministers and 3 deputy justice ministers of 17 EU Member States (including the countries from the Decade of Roma Inclusion), as well as a considerable number of judges, prosecutors, academics and NGO representatives.

Interestingly, these words came precisely from a minister of justice, a lawyer, a former constitutional judge, and a former ambassador of Hungary to Paris during the 2010 expulsions of Roma from France.It is remarkable that not a singe participant in the conference objected to the Hungarian minister’s assertion, although throughout the European history Roma people have never been involved in terrorism, but on contrary, there are documented cases of terrorism against Roma from Austria, Hungary and Germany. Mentioning any other ethnic group in a similar context would probably provoke reactions, but not when it comes to Gypsies. After being accused of every possible crime in Europe for centuries, why not now label them as potential terrorists and put them under constant police surveillance? There was no one there to stand up for the Roma, and the verdict was delivered – at a conference of justice ministers and senior magistrates. In Hungary itself the news was met with bewilderment. Some media raised the question of why Hungarian Roma, who are Christians, would join Islamic terrorist groups, as László Trócsányi implied, but at that point no one yet foresaw the consequences of this change in perspective on Roma issue. Trosányi, in turn, simply announced that he had been misunderstood.

The Bulgarian connection

However, only 5 months later, in Sofia, Bulgarian Education Minister Meglena Kuneva unequivocally stated that although there are not so many migrants in the Balkans, there are many Roma whose children “grow up illiterate and therefore unfit for the economic life of our countries, and this, we have to realise, represents a serious risk not only for the economy, but also for security”. This statement did not come from a far-right politician, but from a former European Commissioner for Consumer Protection, appointed Minister of Education; it was made on March 25, 2016, at a “Conference of teachers’ unions in the Balkans for peace”. Five days later, Minister Meglena Kuneva, participated in a conference on the problems of radicalism and terrorism, organized by the Sofia Security Forum, at which security experts repeated the claim that Roma are particularly vulnerable to radicalization in Bulgaria, and prevention strategy is needed. It seemed as if a new decade of “Roma securitization” was beginning, but this time without much publicity. A possible sign of a return to pre-World War II European policing practices towards Roma with a new rationale.  

Ten years after the verdict – triumph of Anti-Gypsyism

What is the situation 10 years later? In some EU member states, such as Bulgaria, the European Commission has already funded police trainings for prevention of alleged “Roma radicalization” and on this occasion in 2020 a group of MEPs sent a protest letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It is very likely that similar policies are being implemented in other countries that were once part of the Decade of Roma Inclusion but there is no one to sound the alarm because of the lack of effective monitoring. Those who know keep silent. And while so much care is being taken to prevent radicalization of Roma, the real radicals are finding a better reception in the EU Parliament. In 2025, Slovakia is already represented in Brussels by an extremist politician who has been convicted by the supreme court of his homeland of racism against Roma, and expelled from the Slovak Parliament. 

But what have the people from European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture been doing in the meantime? They have been fighting Anti-Gypsyism through musical events, art exhibitions and theatre plays. All this is wonderful, no one disputes the need for cultural initiatives, the problem is that this has nothing to do with the reality in which the vast majority of Roma live today; it’s actually a way of escaping this reality and redirecting public attention. While artists make art, racists make blacklists. And while EU money is being used to prevent “radicalization” in Roma neighbourhoods, it turns out that no one has been preventing radicalization outside of them, and the results are visible now. Can Roma afford the luxury of escaping into the world of arts when the neo-fascists are already knocking at the door?  

Ten years ago, Europe’s Roma were collectively branded a possible target of radicalization in the context of terrorist threats and the increasing influx of refugees into Western Europe. A tacit consensus was reached at EU level on this issue, and the Roma agenda was adjusted to the demands of bureaucrats and populists, while those who disagreed were simply removed. The results today: no Roma resistance, no Roma MEPs, no Roma political representation, no monitoring of government policies, no transparency, no justice, but triumph of Anti-Gypsyism.  

László Trócsányi is now a MEP in Brussels and was even nominated in 2019 by Hungarian prime minister Orbán for EU Enlargement Commissioner, but at the last moment his candidacy was rejected due to a conflict of interests. Meglena Kuneva was nominated by the Bulgarian government in 2024 as its candidate for Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights but she lost to Michael O’Flaherty. Obviously, such people find a good reception in European institutions because nobody sees anything wrong in their statements, and nobody bothers them with questions like how many radicalized Roma have been detected and how much money has been spent on this in the past 10 years. This reveals a deeper systemic and structural problem in the functioning of the European project beneath the surface of apparent concern for the Roma.  

The Roma issue has been in the fridge of European politics for the past decade and is deeply frozen. Shipwrecked NGO elites cannot recover from the suffocating bear hug of their donor-patrons, while fledgling new elites also risk being crippled if they mistake enemies for friends. But political situation in the world is changing and the current status quo in Europe will not survive for long. Now the question is what will the next decade be after 2025? Is the end of the ice age coming for the deep-frozen Roma movement, or is it too early to thaw? For sure, the next 10 years will be very turbulent and the culprits for the failures in the EU’s internal and foreign policy will be sought. It will depend on the foresight and maturity of the Roma elites whether their own community will become the sacrificial lamb that European establishment will offer to atone for its sins and start afresh, or this time the course of history will change. “Roma for Europe” slogan can also be interpreted as “Lambs for St. George’s Day”, so it is important to clarify what kind of Europe the Roma imagine. Perhaps this is what is coming – a Decade of the Redefinition of Europe.