The Challenge of Social Inclusion of Roma. Poverty or Discrimination Approach?

Ten years after the adoption of the first public policy for Roma, the Romanian society went through significant changes, including becoming a member of the European Union. The approach of the Romanian power structure towards the Roma issue did not change during the decade, the majority of policy documents reffered to the Roma as being a social problem and the measures to be taken were associated to poverty alleviation. More recently, starting with 2005, the social inclusion concept gathered the attention of government and official documents adopted were elaborated around combating social exclusion, which means, again, in majority of cases, poverty alleviation. Today, the EU Framework Strategy for Roma is asking the EU member states to „ensure that national, regional and local integration policies focus on Roma in a clear and specific way, and address the needs of Roma with explicit measures to prevent and compensate for disadvantages they face. In fact, the EU Framework Strategy for Roma might become the pushing factor that will bring about the long desired change of the status-quo of the Roma.

Keywords: Social Inclusion, Public Policy, Roma