Brussels/Vienna - Roma face strong discrimination when it comes to finding housing, which makes them easier targets of racist crimes in segregated settlements, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) said in a report issued in Brussels on Tuesday. Since the beginning of 2008, nine members of the Roma minority in Hungary have died in violent attacks, according to the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest.
Segregation and poor housing conditions also make it more difficult for Roma and other itinerant groups to access education and health care services and to find jobs, the Vienna-based agency found.
"Our report on housing shows that many regional and local authorities in the EU are reluctant to adopt and implement adequate Roma housing policies," FRA Director Morten Kjaerum said.
The rights watchdog agency called on the European Commission to link EU structural funds for poorer regions to the implementation of plans that end discrimination in housing.
Some 10 million Roma are estimated to live in the EU, making them the largest collective minority in the Union.
The FRA found that in countries with large Roma groups, a large share of this population experience discrimination in buying or renting housing, with nearly every third Roma feeling discriminated in Greece and every fifth in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Nearly a quarter of Europeans would feel uncomfortable having a Roma neighbour, EU statistics show.
The fact that Roma often live in segregated settlements was sometimes a result of deliberate policies by national or local authorities, the FRA said.
In Hungary, the victims of the attacks often lived at the edge of such communities, which allowed the perpetrators to escape quickly.
The report also cited racist attacks and harassment targeting segregated Roma communities in Hargita county in Romania and in Belfast in Northern Ireland this year, and in the Italian city of Naples in 2008.
Besides the problem of violence, the FRA said that Roma and itinerants often live in informal settlements lacking adequate supply with water or electricity.
