MEPs denounce 'criminal' Italian move against Roma

STRASBOURG: MEPs have strongly criticised the proposal by the Italian government to take fingerprints from the Roma community.

After a lively debate on the issue earlier in the week, parliamentarians agreed on Thursday to send a strong message to Rome by calling on the government of Silvio Berlusconi to stop the fingerprinting until the measure has been approved by the European commission.

There has been widespread condemnation of the hard line taken by the new Italian government against the Roma population, using the “excuse” of protecting the health and rights of Roma children to take their fingerprints, a move denounced as racist by many and similar to the designation of Jews under the Fascist regime of the 1930s.

Perhaps not surprisingly, members from the centre-right EPP-ED group, to which Berlusconi’s party belongs, tried to stop the vote.

German MEP Manfred Weber said that it was too early to vote on the issue as parliament did not have enough information about the proposals, and that a vote now would be nothing more than “headline grabbing”.

There was also support from other Italian politicians, with UEN member Roberta Angelilli calling for the vote to be scrapped and for parliament to back the government’s proposals which, she said, were designed to address the “emergency” facing Roma children who “have no vaccinations, no schooling”.

But Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said that the measures were nothing to do with protecting children, adding that the documents being used by the Italians as part of their “census” were the same ones used to report criminal acts – a clear indication, he said, of how the Roma community was viewed in Italy.

Opponents of the resolution were outvoted, however, and parliamentarians sent a clear message to justice commissioner Jacques Barrot, who was present for the vote, that he must act to block the fingerprinting process until its compatibility with EU law could be established. 

Barrot said he had called on Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni, of the xenophobic Northern League, the junior coalition partner in Berlusconi’s government, to justify the move in a report to be submitted by the end of the month.

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