Romani World Home Page CESS-Hungary Backgound The CESS1 project grew out of a field survey conducted by the European Committee on Romani Emancipation (ECRE) in 2001-2003 in Hungary, the Czech republic and Slovakia. This survey and its resulting reports contained two important findings: the extent, modus operandi and quantities of funding of a widespread segregated educational denial leveled at rural Romani children the scale of the potential negative economic impacts of this system on the future prospects of national economies CESS addresses the second, economic aspect, of these findings. However simply to place this in context we summarise the findings on educational denial. Educational denial The first day at school, an introduction to the real world of Europe? As we rounded the corner, we came across a straggling group of Roma families, mostly mothers with children. All of the youngest were sobbing and the mothers, or their older brothers or sisters, were trying to comfort them. I asked my Romani colleague, a Roma lady who assisted in translation and who was from that village, "What has happened, why were all those children crying." She looked at me with resignation, sadness in her eyes, and replied, "Oh yes, they have probably been sent to the Special school. It happens every year at this time. It is a little shock most Cigany children go through, it prepares them for the rest of their lives." An event recorded in a village in North East Hungary by field worker in 2002. From the Testimony Section at Romani World The survey was designed to unravel the scale, modus operandi and funding of the racist policies of segregated educational denial which harm Roma children to this day. The governments, and the European Commission, stonewalled in the face of the ECRE findings that the number of children forced into such establishments had grown by in excess of 400% since 1989. The European Commission, in its country accession reports, misrepresented the facts by stating that these countries had satisfied the Madrid criteria for accession. These require that as a minimum condition government administrations should be upholding European Law. But in contravention of European Law, these central governments pay bribes to local governments to force Roma children into a virtual gulag of educational denial that is completely managed by government employees and run in government establishments. The European Commission hid these facts from the European Council and European Parliament before they voted on the accession of these countries. The ECRE report was received by the Commission in February 2003 and the vote took place May 2003. The European Human Rights Tribunal found that the European Commission had misrepresented the facts concerning true scale and the responsibility of governments for such abuse. In spite of this the European Parliamentary Petitions Committee prevaricated and refused to investigate the issue. This abusive decision was referred to by the Ombudsman as a "political decision". Economics The second part of the ECRE report examined the economic impacts of this intentional denial of education through the knock-on effect of the reduction in the proportion of technically qualified people in the workforce. This is an acute problem since the Roma were, and continue to be, the fastest growth component of the workforce. This part of the ECRE report was conspicuously ignored by all commentators. However, acknowledging the extreme prejudice suffered by the school age children in this process, it is vitally important to quantify the life-long economic impact on those who leave such establishments. Indeed, the economic aspects of the enforced "under capacitation" of the fastest growing component of the workforce, the Roma, reflects a serious mismanagement of manpower planning on the part of the governments concerned. This mismanagement is proactively undermining the future growth prospects of economies and thereby harming the real income and welfare prospects of whole populations, that is, Roma and non-Roma segments. The System CESS-Cigány Economy Simulation System is an econometric model designed to measure the opportunity costs of this racism, corruption and neglect by government and to provide a basis for rational planning reviews of the options which make the Cigány Economy a major contributor to economic growth and general welbeing. CESS is a computer program developed at SEEL (Systems Engineering Economics Lab) (see footnote). It is written in DecisionScript, an ECMAScript extension (see footnote), and JavaScript. It runs on the Laboratory global network and can be configured to run as an online system with client dialogues using a browser. The project has several phases of development. The first involves the creation of accurate population projections for Roma and non-Roma populations. These are associated with calculations of shortfalls in Gross National Product created by the earning capacity deficits within the Roma segment. The first simulation series will be created for Hungary for which ECRE has supplied information including data from independent Hungarian sources. The outcomes of simulations will be analysed from the standpoint of the future economic prospects of the country in terms of dependency support through the funding of pensions and social welfare systems, health services, education ald vocational training as well as the payment of international debt. In addition, feasible strategies will be proposed together with budgets able to address the economic deficits and gradually recover average per capita real income levels. The policy option outcomes can be simulated on CESS. CESS has been made possible through direct support from ECRE (see footnote) and supports the ECRE objectives of the elimination of the enforced exclusion, dependency and poverty of the Roma by working towards the achievement of a Roma status as equal contributors to, and beneficiaries of, European economic growth. In agreement with ECRE all findings from the CESS project will be disseminated through Romani World (a sponsor) as well as the Agence Presse Europeenne syndication and wire services and international media network. DF-SEEL Portsea Isle 6th May 2006 1 the word cess is an old English term for tax or fiscal buden Footnotes: ECMAScript is an ISO standard for JavaScript developed by the European Computer Manufacturer's Association. For further information see Whatever happened to JavaScript? The project team is located at the Development Foundation1 a division of SEEL and is managed by Hector W. McNeill the Systems Coordinator at SEEL. Mr. McNeill is a development economist and logic designer and a graduate of Cambridge and Stanford Universities and President of the George Boole Institute. ECRE requested that this work be initiated in January 2006 based on data sets collected in 2001/2003 and which are being updated; the project is sponsored by Romani World the online medium. 1The Development Foundation was formerly known as the Agricultural Development Foundation.