Enlargement Background to this section Return to the Enlargement list The process of European enlargement has been dominated by an administrative approach, that of introducing a wide range of regulatory norms and legislation to comply with EU requirements. The standards of progress have been set by simply meeting deadlines in the introduction and ratifying such laws. As a result of this poorly thought out approach two things have suffered immensely because they drifted into the background. That is human rights and national development. In the context of this site, the process of enlargement has proceeded very much at the expense of the interests of the Roma in the fields of broad economic development and equal treatment. For over a decade the Phare program has poured billions of Euro into Central European programmes. But given the racist tendencies, especially amongst the very institutions "managing" Phare funds, most sector initiatives remained exclusively mainstream and benefitted directly the non-Roma segments of the communities. The European Commission never bothered itself about this issue because they took their cues from the governments and ministry staff who run their affairs in this manner. Rather than set a European standard the Commission just bumbled along checking on the timing of administrative decisions. Perhaps the biggest disaster resulting from the poor management of the European Commission has been its failure, throughout the pre-accession period, to call attention to the fraudulent and criminal behaviour of the govermnments and ministries they have been supporting with funding. The reporting on the special schools by the Commission has been inaccurate, misleading and broadly designed to play down the real signficance of the issue. In particular the Commission has never stated in clear terms that the reason for the 400% growth in numbers of special school children, since 1989, is the result of a change in government policy. Central governments have diverted local authority funding through an incentive scheme to deny rural Roma children education. Everyone concerned in this criminal activity, including the fraudulent "classification" of children, are employees of government. No, not criminal gangs, governments. It is therefore all the more shocking that the European Commission failed to call attention to this criminality. Instead they have gave these governments a clean bill of health. The situation is so ridiculous that the European Commission proclaims how much it is contributing to Roma development initiatives. And yet these funds are less than 4% of the amount of funding these national governments pass through this criminal incentive scheme to retard Roma development. The European Commission is therefore clearly on the losing side and yet has the arrogance to proclaim how much it is helping Roma. The European Commission has demonstrated a severely compromised approach to the Roma in producing third rate analyses. After a decade of presense of Phare, and four years of "negotiations", they continue to regurgitate the same inaccurate statistics. The reason is clearly because they have no interest nor reason for demanding more accurate statistics. There is a major and looming crisis facing the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia in the field of human resources development. This has been caused by the fact that the mainstream population is decining fairly rapidly and the Roma population is rising at just below 2% each year. It is remarkable that the Commission quotes the same figures for the Roma populations all the time, as if it hasnt grown since 1989. A European Roma population workshop was recently held by SEEL on Portsea Isle. This came up with a rule of thumb which is well worth keeping in mind. Any population growing at 2% each year will grow by around 30% over 14 years. In 1989, for example in Hungary, the standard estimate of Roma was 600,000. This means that in 2003 the population is at least 780,000 or approaching 800,000. In terms of school children the growth rate is roughly twice this. This is why although the Roma populations make up, in fact, at least 10% of the Hungarian population the growth in Roma children of school age is twice this rate and approaching 30% of the national school entry. Roughly 50% of these children are in rural areas where they are forced into special schools or other segregated schools. Working this though to the labour force in a decade or so, these countries will have a severely incapacitated workforce as a direct result of policies of racism funded by the current governments. The real earning capacity of the population will decline and even mainstream retirees will find their pensions disappearing into thin air because of the incapacity of the economy to sustain productivity at a level to sustain their real value. So the mainstream is going to pay a very high price for their current indifference to the plight of Roma school children. We have outlined in the Development section the economic performance deficits of these countries associated with this irresponsible educational and human resources "policies". Last, but not least, the European Commission, applied a very restricted measure of the criteria for the transcription of EU laws into national statutes as a criterion for "performance'. This had two important negative side effects. One it caused scarce human resources in these countries to be diverted away from more pressing national development and human rights priorities. It also failed to meet the so called Madrid requirements that government administrative structures and the judiciary should be seen to be applying the law. Clearly in the case of education they are not and yet the Commission has given them a clean bill of health and not reported the true nature and extent of the horrors to the European Council nor the Parliament. The European Committee on Romnani Emancipation pursued this matter both through the European Parlimantary Petitions Committee and via the European Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Petitions Committee refused to investigate and the Ombudsman could only come up with excuses why he could do nothing. For these countries the solution to these issues respresents a fundamental economic and financial salvation for their future. On the other hand enlargement and Europe does not represent any such salvation on any defacto basis applied and managed by the European Commission so far.