Monday 2 June 2008
European leaders should be more energetic in
warning the Italian Government
about hate rhetoric against immigrants, says
Romanian Socialist MEP Adrian
Severin in an interview with
EurActiv.
Adrian Severin, a former foreign minister and UN rapporteur on
human rights,
is the head of the Romanian Social Democrat Delegation in the
European
Parliament. He chairs the EU-Ukraine Delegation of the European
Parliament.
In the last few weeks, the situation has been particularly tense in
Italy as
concerns the Roma minority and Romanian citizens living there.
There was
also a debate prompted by the Socialists in the EP. Was this
debate
successful?
The most recent debate in Strasbourg was not very
much conclusive, the
reason being that we could not get a majority in favor
of a debate followed
by a resolution. On the other hand, the debate was good
because it came at a
right time, as a continuation to a resolution passed at
the end of last
year. Nonetheless, there is a threat in Italy. Comments like
Interior
Minister Roberto Maroni’s calling for the immediate dismantlement
of Roma
camps, and the arrest of their inhabitants, are to my mind clearly
fascist.
Roma are citizens of the EU, you cannot dismantle a camp because
its
inhabitants are Roma or expel or imprison someone without having a legal
ground.
Are you qualifying only individual ministerial comments as
neo-fascist, or
the ones of the entire government?
A government has a
collective responsibility, it works on the basis of
collegiality. When a
member of government makes a fascist remark, either the
government adopts it
-and it becomes fascist as a whole – or the government
dismisses the
minister. For the time being, we are in the preliminary phase
for such
statements, but we should not compromise on our values.
Are you
reproaching to the Italian government actions or inactions?
I think we
need to speak both of measures taken and not taken. When a
government is
lenient with its citizens putting some camps on fire, this is
obviously
something inacceptable. This a non-action contributing to a
certain
non-European policy. When you do nothing to stop such kind of
actions, while
pursuing a rhetoric which incites to hatred or pogroms, you
should be
condemned as a government.
But, at the same time, aren’t Roma victims of
a similar treatment in other
countries, even in you own country,
Romania?
No, I don’t think so. When there was a case a few years ago, in
Hadareni,
all Europe was against Romania, criticizing us even though the
authorities
reacted quickly and arrested the people responsible for
violence. There are
also other observers -like Misha Glenny in a recent
article in The Guardian-
that noted pertinently that there are double
standards. My criticism is more
likely addressed towards European leaders,
because they can stop this kind
of dérapage of the Italian
government.
Do you view yourself as a whistleblower in this
case?
If you want to put it so, yes. We have to ring the bell as loud as
possible
at this moment. But not as Romanians, this is not a Romanian
problem. We
have to ring the bell as Europeans. A disease is the problem of
the sick
man. Xenophobia and racism are a disease. Not being xenophobic or
racist,
we, Romanians, are not the sick man. Those who want to transform
this kind
of rhetoric into policy, these are the sick. The European ideas
must not
fall as victims to this disease. That’s why we have to intervene
quickly,
like we did for the mad cow cases for example.