With this week’s peaceful start of the new school year in Medimurje County, the Roma Education Fund would like to remind the Croatian prime minister that membership in the EU brings certain obligations and that Croatian schools have a responsibility to provide quality, inclusive education to all children and should enroll all eligible Romani students.
With this week’s peaceful start of the new school year in Medimurje County, the Roma Education Fund would like to remind the Croatian prime minister that membership in the EU brings certain obligations and that Croatian schools have a responsibility to provide quality, inclusive education to all children and should enroll all eligible Romani students. Despite the grievances of some Croat parents who have protested the presence of Roma in local schools in the past, Medimurje County will continue to support multicultural classrooms and schools as an inherent benefit to all students, no matter their ethnic background.
“It is important that the Roma community, permanently at the margins of society and among the losers, finally becomes a winner, whose children get quality education and step across the poverty threshold.”
– Zoran Milanović, Prime Minister of Croatia on the occasion of International Roma Day April 8, 2012
In 2012 and 2013, Croatia led the presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion – a political agreement of twelve states with large Romani populations to address issues of education, employment, housing and health for Romani communities in Central, South Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as Spain – and invested a consonant amount of resources in desegregating its school system, particularly in Medimurje County where the bulk of Croatian Roma live. Indeed, Minister of Education Zseljko Jovanovic, in cooperation with his colleagues in Medimurje, urged a stop to protests by parents about the presence of Romani children in formerly all-Croat kindergartens and preschools in Hrascne Gorje and surrounding villages in September 2012. The Roma Education Fund’s regular monitoring missions have clearly established that Medimurje’s intent is good, while actual practice in local kindergartens, preschools, and schools may reflects local conditions, prejudices and resources as well as local good will. This is progress.
Although Croatia anticipates halcyon days ahead, we remind Croatia that its membership has commensurate responsibilities to guarantee the rights of all its residents. As Romani children queue to enter their classrooms this fall, we’ll see whether the improvements that came with EU accession and the presidency of the Roma Decade are merely temporary or a more permanent fixture for the EU’s newest member.
Croatia does deserve the congratulations it has received as the newest country to accede to the EU’s political and economic union of 28 member states in 2013. Thanks to the political and economic leverage of the EU, Croatia has made great strides to comply with a broad swath of reforms guided by the acquis communitaire during the accession process. However, with Croatia now safely anchored within the economic and political harbor of the EU, this is not the time to forget what business remains undone and what guarantees have been made.
For more in-depth analysis of Croatia’s educational policies and REF’s role in education in Medimurje, visit: http://infogr.am/croatia-child-by-child-step-by-step
