site.bta Bulgaria Hosts 11th Plenary Meeting of CoE Ad hoc Committee of Experts on Roma Issues

Bulgaria Hosts 11th Plenary Meeting of CoE Ad hoc Committee of Experts on Roma Issues

Sofia, April 27 (BTA) - "Bulgaria has successful policies in the field of Roma school and pre-school inclusion, as well as in health mediation," Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Labour and Social Policy Minister Ivailo Kalfin said here on Wednesday. He addressed the opening of the 11th Plenary Meeting of the Ad hoc Committee of Experts on Roma Issues (CAHROM) answerable directly to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. On the Bulgarian side, the event was organized by the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues with the Council of Ministers (NCCEDI), which is chaired by Kalfin.

"A lot of efforts are made in the field of housing policy, but the results are mixed: there are places with very good results and other, where efforts to improve housing conditions are not quite as effective as desired," Kalfin said. A manual is being drafted in conjunction with the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria with instructions on case-by-case handling of Roma ghettos.

The Deputy PM also spoke about the education and professional qualification policy. "There are many vocational training programmes, but the interest they attract depends on the community," he pointed out. "The opportunities for training in various occupations are more than the people who take them," he added.

Kalfin said the subject of Roma is important against the backdrop of what is happening in Europe because of the refugee wave and the financial crises. "Nationalism is now increasingly present, and politicians in Europe ever more frequently resort to hate speech," he observed.

The Labour Minister recalled that Bulgaria is implementing a fundamental strategic document: the National Roma Integration Strategy 2012-2020.