Studies & Policy Documents

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Authored in 2018, this Position Paper by the Roma Education Fund explains the challenges and explores the next steps that can be made by the European Union to mitigate and improve the use of European Structural Funds to advance Roma integration and inclusion. It covers the instruments and mechanisms for a binding approach, assuring funding, remote areas access to EU funds, EU funding procedures and constraints, and suggests remedies derived from REF’s thirteen years of experience, with recommendations for the European Commission and Member States.

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The Roma Education Fund’s Strategy Paper for 2015-2020 was developed by REF’s senior managers last year. Approved in November 2014 by REF’s Board, this document will shape and guide how REF focuses on its mission in the next operational period, 2015-2020, with its commensurate mid- and long-term goals and the strategic directions for achieving them. The Strategy Paper illuminates how REF intends to embed effective models for inclusive Roma education through strong partnerships with national and sub-national education authorities and with substantive Roma participation. This requires intense communication throughout the process of adjusting REF’s five grant models to national and local contexts. This move from proposal-based to model-based program design and funding is a clear sign of REF’s increased accountability and ownership of the projects and their results, and will increase the capacity to expand and enhance these models.

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The Public Education Act, under paragraph (§ 27 (5) of Art.Z), would authorize the government to determine in a decree, the waivers which could be applied to permit segregation in education. If the proposed amendments would be voted and adopted without public consultation, the Government and the Minister will have the tools in their hands to legalize segregated remedial education. The legalization of segregated education violates the dignity of the whole of Hungarian society and makes it impossible for all of our children to live together as equal citizens in Hungary.

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There are between 10 million and 12 million Roma living in the European Union, candidate countries and potential candidate countries in the Western Balkans. Roma living in the European Union are EU citizens and have the same rights as all other citizens. A significant number of Roma live in extreme marginalisation in both rural and urban areas, and in very poor social-economic conditions. They are disproportionally affected by discrimination, violence, unemployment, poverty, bad housing and poor health standards.

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These written comments are submitted by the International Step by Step Association in close collaboration with the Roma Education Fund and the European Early Childhood Education Research
Association pursuant to the permission granted by th