Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-02-Speech-3-028-000"
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"en.20110202.13.3-028-000"2
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".
Mr President, thank you for your statement, and I would also like to thank the President-in-Office of the Council and the Vice-President of the Commission. I would like to thank all those who suggested we have this debate – from my group, Mrs Göncz in particular. As you said today, Mr President, the extermination of the Roma has often been pushed into the background when talking about the extermination of the Jews. However, there were also other victims of the National Socialist atrocities. In this context, I would also like to mention the homosexuals, as you have also done today in a different context, Mr President.
I agree with the President-in-Office of the Council and also with the previous speaker that the best form of commemoration is when we also think about the future. We cannot be satisfied with the situation of the Roma on our continent today. They are still discriminated against and prejudices still exist. When a country is now considering reverting back to the name ‘gypsies’ instead of using the name ‘Roma’ in order to avoid any confusion, then I will certainly not criticise that, only to say that the fight against the prejudices and the fight against discrimination is what is important and not bowing to the discrimination by changing a name.
We have been debating the issue of the Roma in this Parliament for years, and we have to admit – even on our visits to the various countries – that there are still very major problems, that the cycle of discrimination and disadvantage has still not been broken and that many children are today still being taught in separate schools. I am therefore also very grateful to the Hungarian Presidency for taking up this subject. Despite all the differences of opinion that we have, Mrs Győri, on this matter we will hopefully achieve a major success together.
Our group has for some time been in contact, through Mr Schulz, with Günter Grass, the German writer, who has also set up a Roma foundation. Günter Grass once said: ‘You, the Romani, in your permanent state of dispersal are – strictly speaking – Europeans in a sense that we, imprisoned in the confinement of our nationalities, ought to bear in mind if the united Europe is not to develop into a bureaucratic administrative and all-powerful economic colossus. At least in this one respect, with their cross-border mobility, the people we call gypsies are ahead of us. They should, first of all, be allowed to prove their identity with a European passport that guarantees them the right to stay anywhere from Romania to Portugal.’ (end of quote)
We ought to create the conditions that make all Roma feel at home where they live. We ought also to create the conditions that allow them to travel freely throughout Europe without being deported again. When we finally see this happen then we really will have done a great deal for the Roma, and then we will have made the terrible things that the Nazis did to the Roma through the Holocaust during the Second World War a thing of the past."@en1
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