New Solutions to Old Problems: Maximising the Use of Funding for Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation

Various assessments of the last EU Framework for national Roma integration strategies up to 2020 acknowledged that Roma communities needed to be involved in project design, implementation, and evaluation to bring about change. This now needs to be translated into better funding programs and regulations for public and private donors, including using more national resources for smaller projects, prioritization of bottom-up approaches, and mainstreaming in the bigger EU initiatives such as the EU Green Deal.

The EU Roma Strategic Framework and the Council Recommendation encourage the Member States, in particular those with greater challenges and those with a significant Roma population, to make full use of the funding available under the 2021-2027 multi-annual financial framework (MFF) and NextGeneration EU for Roma people. To enable this, the 2021-2027 regulations have been strengthened and streamlined, for example through the ESF+ specific objective to promote the socio-economic integration of marginalised communities, such as Roma, and complementary ERDF investments in this area, and the introduction of the corresponding thematic enabling condition in the Common Provisions Regulation for cohesion policy funds, requiring Member States that earmark funds for this targeted objective to have a national Roma inclusion strategic policy framework in place. This includes strong requirements related to monitoring, measures against segregation, mainstreaming of Roma inclusion at regional and local level, and close cooperation with the Roma civil society and other relevant stakeholders. Moreover, under the ESF+, all Member States must comply with a 25% thematic concentration requirement focused on social inclusion, of which Roma are a key target group.

In the negotiations for the 2021-2027 partnership agreements and ERDF and ESF+ programmes, the Commission emphasised that country-specific challenges related to Roma should be properly reflected and addressed in the forthcoming programmes, and that measures promoting Roma inclusion and access to mainstream non-segregated infrastructure and services should be implemented.

According to the Commission’s assessment and the National Roma Strategic Frameworks (NRSFs), many Member States have mentioned in these Frameworks, as sources of funding, a combination of national and EU funding, mostly under the EU cohesion policy, as well as funding from other international donors. Although national funds, ESF+, ERDF or the Just Transition Fund, are mentioned in several NRSFs as sources of funding for the implementation of proposed measures, they refer to mainstream initiatives and lack details of budgetary allocations for Roma. Most NRSFs plan the use of EU funding programmes, however they only exceptionally provide details in terms of funding allocation.  In the framework of trhe European Semester, Member States have dedicated around 28% of their Recovery and Resiliency Facility (RRF) funds to supporting social objectives spread across four categories: employment and skills, education and childcare, health and long-term care, and social policies.

This lack of specific budget planning for Roma is an enormous missed opportunity, as there are great examples of targeted use of funding leading to great success. The sectoral objectives of education, employment, health, and housing are interconnected, so action in one may lead to spillover effects in the other. One example of this is the encouragement of entrepeneurship among Roma. Projects encouraging entrepeneurship or emplyoment access among Roma do not only provide a vehicle out of poverty, but may also improve access to healthcare, education and housing. At the same time these benefits can also lead to improvements in the community and so help close the gap between Roma and non-Roma. One example of spillover is that steady employment may bring health insurance benefits which facilitate access to care or medicines for Roma. Improvements are possible, as long as the Roma inclusion strategy makes clear mention of how and where funds will be used. If Member States and Accession Countries are aware of this, more specific use of funding in and with the community can lead to tangible improvements. This could prove to be a great impulse for true Roma equality.