Challenges to Designing EU Roma Policy

The integration of the Europe’s largest minority Roma has come higher on the EU policy agenda over the past decade following the two waves of Enlargement (2004 and 2007). In the context of the post-crisis developmental strategy Europe 2020 the estimates about the costs of non-inclusion of Roma introduced the new policy perspective. The new ‘economically targeted audience’ –approach shifted the focus from the human rights issues and presented a new platform for intervention. The goal of the paper is to discuss the EU/national approach to designing of Roma policies. Critically reflecting upon the new Framework for Roma integration and the recent developments, the paper questions the feasibility of the project. It reveals and analyses the challenges to policy design both at conceptual and practical levels. The paper argues that the shortfalls of the qualitative and quantitative indicators employed reduce the ‘policy-project’ to a rhetorical platform. The analysis of the dominant in the Roma-policy designing top-down institutional approach (addressing the target group as ‘objects of change’ and ‘service recipients’) reflects on the role of the agency. The focus also falls on the role of the strategic assessment of provisioned measures vs. expected outcomes in the process of policy planning. Finally, the paper suggests that the critical assessment of a policy design could enable distinguishing between the political marketing of ideas and the strategically planned changes.