Govt hails EC gypsy ruling

2008-09-04 18:56

(ANSA) - Rome, September 4 - The Italian government on Thursday hailed a ruling from the European Commission that a controversial census of gypsy camps was OK.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he had always been certain that the census would be approved by the European Union.

''I had no doubt, I was certain about this response from the European Union, given that our measure was in line with EU law,'' Berlusconi said after the EC said the census did discriminate against gypsies.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he was also certain that the EU would approve the measures, which included fingerprinting norms criticised by human rights groups. ''Today's confirmation makes up for all the accusations and insults I have received,'' Maroni said.

Maroni added that he was expecting three other decrees to be approved.

The centre-left opposition said that the EU had approved a version of the census that had been revised to address human rights concerns.

The Italian Red Cross said Thursday that the first major camp census, across Rome, had so far covered 25 camps and identified more than 1,500 people.

The survey started at the beginning of August and is slated to end by October 15.

In its ruling, the EC said the census does not discriminate against the Roma community and is in line with European Union law.

An analysis of an Italian report on the census showed it did not seek ''data based on ethnic origin or religion,'' said Michele Cercone, spokesman for European Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot.

A controversial fingerprinting programme has the sole aim of ''identifying persons who cannot be identified in any other way,'' he said.

The fingerprinting of minors was only being carried out ''in strictly necessary cases and as the ultimate possibility of identification,'' Cercone said. Rome had worked with Brussels to ''correct measures that could give rise to protests,'' he said..

Barrot will continue to monitor how the survey is being implemented and what its results are, Cercone said.

Maroni launched the camp scheme this summer to clean up camps and get a picture of who was living in them by fingerprinting occupants including children.

Maroni, a leading member of the rightwing Northern League, has consistently defended himself from charges of discriminating against Roma.

He has insisted the census was not aimed against any specific ethnic group or spurred by a wave of crime-linked anti-immigrant feeling.

The fingerprinting campaign has been slammed by the European parliament, human rights groups and the Romanian government.

In the face of protests, Italy agreed with the European Union to make sure the scheme complied with human rights norms. It also announced it would require all Italian citizens to have their prints put on ID cards starting in 2010.

But the Council of Europe (CE), Europe's rights body, said last month that Italian politicians had lacked ''the moral leadership'' to face down the kind of anti-gypsy sentiment that led to incidents such as the torching of camps in Naples in June.

Berlusconi defended the scheme as a means of helping Roma integrate as well as stopping gypsies forcing their children to beg and steal.

Also Thursday, the Vatican urged the EU to carry through on public commitments they had made to safeguard ethnic minorities like gypsies.

EU states should treat gypsy communities as they would other institutions, Msgr Agostino Marchetto, head of the Vatican department that deals with migrant and traveler issues, told Vatican daily l'Osservatore Romano.

''This 'institutionalisation' brings with it the advantage of spurring (EU) states to become aware of the EU programmes that have been approved,'' Marchetto said at the end of the World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Gypsies in Freising, Germany.