From influencers to activists, hailing from Spain to Slovakia, the more than 700 newly elected members of the European parliament will gather on Tuesday for their inaugural session. Their ranks, however, will not include any MEPs who identify as Roma, according to Roma rights organisations, who describe it as a tremendous blow to Europe’s largest ethnic minority.
“We’re facing an unprecedented situation,” said Ismael Cortés, an associate professor at the Unesco Institute of Philosophy for Peace. “Out of 720 seats in the European parliament, zero are going to be dedicated to Roma people.”
Since the EU’s 2004 enlargement, the number of Roma MEPs had steadily grown, reaching a high of four MEPs in the outgoing parliament. But this time the estimated 6 million Roma living across the EU will not have any direct voice in the parliament, said Cortés.
However, parties on the populist right – particularly in France, Germany, Italy and Austria – made large gains in parliament, giving them a voice when it comes to charting the EU’s future.
“It’s extremely paradoxical,” said Cortés, pointing to many instances in which the far right targeted Roma people. “The European minority that has been scapegoated the most and continues to be scapegoated is left without representation.”
The resulting situation could be “dangerous” for Roma communities, he added, citing the longstanding role that Roma MEPs have played in standing up to anti-Roma stereotypes and hate speech in the parliament. “Now Roma people become the target of hate speech but with no parliamentary reply.”
The lack of Roma MEPs could also jeopardise efforts to deal with the challenges that some Roma communities continue to face, such as accessing decent housing or the segregation of Roma children in schools across the EU. “Without a voice in parliament, these issues fall off the agenda,” said Cortés. “Doors are closing instead of opening.”
As they sounded the alarm, Roma rights organisations pointed to political parties to explain how this situation had come about. In the lead-up to the recent EU elections, Roma people were largely excluded from the top seats on candidate lists as parties worried about losses, said Gabriela Hrabanova, the executive director of the European Roma Grassroots Organisations Network.
This exclusion is exacerbated by the longstanding discrimination that many Roma face and which has left many with a deep distrust of the political system, she added. “So we don’t have enough mobilised Roma to actually make the difference in elections by voting for these candidates.”
For many in the Roma community, it feels like an unwinnable battle, particularly when it comes to the often opaque selection process for EU candidates, which critics have long accused of reflecting and perpetuating systemic biases against minority groups. “This is a big loss for us. We’re invisible everywhere,” said Hrabanova. “We’re not in media, we’re not in high culture.”
As the European parliament does not keep statistics based on ethnicity and race of MEPs, the tally of Roma MEPs comes from rights groups and is based on candidates’ public declarations. Campaigners have warned for months that gains made by the far right in the new European parliament mean the institution risks being even more out of step with the reality of the EU’s diverse population.
“The diversity of Europe, it’s not being reflected at all,” said Hrabanova. “In some places in Europe, Roma are as much as 10% of the population. And if we don’t have even a single representative, there’s something really wrong.”
Her organisation and others will now be forced to rely on the goodwill of allied MEPs to help shepherd through budget and policy decisions that affect Roma communities across the EU, she said. Failure to do so could keep the cycles of exclusion and inequality in place, she added. “So there’s a lot at stake.”
Cortés pointed to the EU’s motto of “United in Diversity”, contrasting this aim with the parliament’s failure to include even one person from Europe’s largest ethnic minority.
“Its institutions should be the mirror and reflection of the society we want to live in, from a democratic point of view,” he added. “If at the political level we’re generating these processes of exclusion, of discrimination, of marginalisation, of not believing in the real value of diversity, what message are we sending to European society?”
