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European Network on Social Inclusion and Roma under the Structural Funds
Structural Funds: Investing in Roma
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European Network on Social Inclusion and Roma under the Structural Funds
Structural Funds: Investing in Roma
Brussels, Dec. 13th
The fourth meeting of the Integrated Platform on Roma inclusion focused on early education as a key issue to tackle the Roma situation all over Europe
The European Platform, created by the European Commission in 2009 to bring together major European actors in issues of Roma inclusion, met for the fourth time on December 13th in Brussels. Following the roadmap of the Platform, set up under the Spanish EU presidency in the first half of this year, the Platform focused on a specific area of social inclusion of Roma, in this case, the theme chosen by the Belgian Presidency of the EU was the early education of Roma children.
In this opportunity the debate was based on a working paper prepared by the European Social Observatory and UNICEF on the importance of addressing education in the earliest stages (0 to 6 years) and its positive impact on educational development. The document provides suggestions and recommendations to both national and European level on how this issue should be incorporated into public policies and the potential of European resources to finance such actions.
EURoma was invited to this meeting and there was a broad representation of NGOs and experts in the field of education, as well as international organizations and Member States.
The European Roma Policy Coalition (ERPC), through a public statement highlighted that this has been a lost opportunity, understanding that the platform should be the sphere where not only specific issues, in this case early childhood education, are addressed but where other key issues related to the current policy agenda and affecting the Roma minority, for example, the future of cohesion policy, the 2020 Strategy and National Reform Plans, and specially the announced EU Framework for National Strategies for the Integration of Roma needs to be dealt with. Issues that unfortunately have only been superficially addressed during the meeting.
Next meeting of the Platform will be 8th of April, 2011
The discussion paper prepared ad hoc for this meeting
To see the agenda follow this link
