The hidden constituency: Will Roma voters decide next month's European elections?

The celebration of International Roma Day this month took place under particularly grim circumstances. Two weeks ago in France groups of teenagers attacked Roma communities after a rumour spread on social media that they were kidnapping children.

Not long after in Italy, neo-fascist group Casa Pound and the far-right Forza Nuova held violent protests against the transfer of Roma people, including 33 children, to a reception center in a Rome suburb.

Despite all attempts of extermination in European history, we Roma have kept our language, traditions and culture. This is the spirit of forty-seven years ago this month—April 8, 1971—when we decided at a meeting in London that we no longer would tolerate being described as “gypsies.”

We were Roma: one people across Europe, who, through our rights in a democratic and open Europe, could travel freely between countries to meet with others who shared the same culture and identity. Symbolically, we marked our newly-found unity by adopting the Roma flag and the Roma anthem.

Since then, Roma have continuously supported the European project, and in the past decade, the European Union in its turn has drawn attention to the plight of Roma and urged governments to do more to include Europe’s largest and most disadvantaged ethnic minority.

Recently, it became clear that Roma and the EU share a common enemy: far-right populism. From Matteo Salvini calling for the expulsion of Roma to Viktor Orban comparing them to the internal “migrants” he rails against, right-wing populist leaders have vilified Roma in their electoral campaigns.

With depressing inevitability, they have then lashed out against the EU and its values of tolerance, openness and respect of the rule of law.

While there are such close ties between Roma and the European Union, why don’t pro-EU-candidates engage publicly with Roma voters, a few weeks before the European Parliament elections?  After all, there are half a million Roma each in France and Spain. In Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, Roma make up five to ten per cent of the population.

Mainstream parties should look to Slovakia for inspiration. There, a young, liberal and unapologetically pro-EU candidate, Zuzana Caputova, won the presidency last week.

Targeting the Roma vote was part of her strategy. After each round of victory, she thanked Roma voters in Romanes—the language Roma communities share across Europe.  This was a bold and courageous gesture at a time when candidates rarely dare to support Roma for fear of losing votes.

More importantly, Caputova recognized the crucial role Roma voters and candidates played in her victory. In the Slovakian local elections in 2018, about 40 Roma mayors and over 400 councillors were elected.

Their common alliance against the far right contributed to the defeat of Marian Kotleba, a political leader known for promoting violence against Roma, in the first round of the Slovakian presidential elections—as it did in the regional elections two years ago.

In some other European countries, there is growing interest in the electoral potential of Roma. In Spain for example, four large political parties—from the left-wing Podemos to the conservative Ciudadanos—placed Roma candidates on their lists in response to the electoral successes of the far-right party Vox.

Beyond elections, a strong movement of Roma civic action is happening across Europe, in which coalitions of Roma activists mobilize their communities to speak up against hate-speech, racist violence and right-wing policies.

Last summer, sparked by ethnic killings in Ukraine and hateful comments by Salvini in Italy, Roma took to the streets from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary up to North Macedonia and Spain to demand justice and respect for their communities.

In Italy, after the stabbing of an 11-year-old Roma boy on the Rome metro, the activist group Kethane organized a hunger strike in front of the Italian Parliament in response to a surge of racist violence.

In Romania, Aresel obtained an official apology from the Romanian President for the lack of acknowledgement of Roma victims of the Holocaust in an official ceremony.

In Bulgaria, the Roma Standing Conference, together with disability rights activists, forced the resignation of the nationalist Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov in November last year. The politician had compared Roma people with “ferocious humanoids” and Roma women with “street bitches.”

All these examples make it abundantly clear that Roma political and civic advocates stand on the same side as pro-EU forces. In some parts of Europe, they already flexed their political muscles by helping bring pro-European leaders to power, including Roma politicians.

In the coming weeks, ahead of the European Parliament elections, the question will be whether pro-European parties and candidates will publicly show their support for Roma and commit to protecting them from far-right violence after the May elections.

Across Europe, Roma communities are standing up for EU values. It is an opportunity progressive politicians should not miss.