European Roma Rights Centre

𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝟯 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄.

Mainstream European parties have abandoned the cordon sanitaire and started cooperating with the far-right. The same forces mean upcoming EU budget cuts threaten to defund Roma inclusion altogether. Two crises, feeding each other.

Far-right parties now rule, coalesce in government, or lead opposition polls in several EU member states. Centre-right accommodation of far-right politics normalises their rhetoric, and voters follow. Instead of capturing those votes, mainstream parties are cannibalised by the far-right.

The consequences are very real. In Spain, the Fundación Secretariado Gitano's EqualTreatment Programme employs eleven Romani lawyers specialised in antigypsyism to defend victims of discrimination, funded by the European Social Fund+. This is exactly what the proposed budget changes put at risk. Where there are no mandatory goals, Romani communities are systematically neglected. The political accommodation of xenophobia translates directly into fiscal neglect.

Unless the EU reinstates a specific Roma equality objective, guarantees a minimum allocation for vulnerable groups, and enforces rule-of-law conditionality, the next decade may institutionalise the very inequalities the far-right thrives upon.

🔗 Read the full article here https://www.errc.org/news/the-crumbling-cordon-sanitaire-centre-right-complicity-and-the-eu-budget-threat-to-roma-rights

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The Roma Rights Review was published with the financial support of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the EU nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Legal action sounds expensive and intimidating. For a lot of us it means lawyers, court fees, and years of waiting. But that's only one narrow slice of what's actually available.

On Wednesday 16 September at 15:00 we're holding a training on the things you can do without either a lawyer or a court for Roma Rights activists.

Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/opVNtSgyeuMXLjTQ6

You can request documents from any public body and they have to respond. You can take a complaint to your national ombudsperson or equality body. There are routes into the European Commission, Council of Europe Bodies, and the UN treaty bodies. These are real procedures with real outcomes behind them: a Roma neighbourhood in Albania got its water back after a complaint to the equality body. Housing plans in Calabria were changed after a civic access request. None of it started in a courtroom.

The training will last 1 hour and 30 minutes and cover things like drafting letters, structuring a complaint out of messy field notes, and finding the right legal body for your issue. No legal background needed.

Nothing says "systemic" like being convicted of the same human rights violation four times.

In August 2023, Sofia's Orlandovtsi community, home to Romani families since the 1950s, was flattened by city excavators. The European Court of Human Rights' emergency order arrived one day too late. Now, the the ruling won by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee found: Article 8 violated. €10,000 for each of the 56 applicants. And an explicit order for urgent legislative reform.

But a ruling only matters if it's enforced. In 2025, Sofia demolished homes in the Zaharna Fabrika district anyway, in open defiance of a Strasbourg interim order issued just four days earlier. Courts orders only matter if a country has a basic respect for the rule of law.

Full story here: https://www.errc.org/news/repeat-offender-european-court-orders-bulgaria-to-reform-after-another-unlawful-demolition-of-roma-homes

📢The second part of our Mainstreaming Hate series is out now.
https://www.errc.org/news/disaster-nationalism-in-action-simeonov-bulgaria-and-the-mainstreaming-of-hate-speech

It looks at how the energies and resentments that feed the far-right - combined with what Richard Seymour called "the chance to humiliate others" - have animated anti-Roma racism. Bulgaria's Valeri Simeonov is the case study.

In May 2026, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this far-right politician's speeches from the rostrum of Bulgaria's parliament - calling Roma "brazen, arrogant and brutalised humanoids" - were hate speech that Bulgaria failed to stop. By then, twelve years had passed. He had served as deputy prime minister, and his coalition partner had appointed him to chair the national council on ethnic integration. No sanctions ever followed.

His words had consequences: attacks that forced hundreds of Roma from their homes, rendering many homeless or destitute.

This is what mainstreaming looks like when it goes unchecked over a period of decades. We are only now seeing the real effects on millions of Roma in the EU.

🔗 Read the full piece: here: https://www.errc.org/news/disaster-nationalism-in-action-simeonov-bulgaria-and-the-mainstreaming-of-hate-speech 📌 Next up: "The Crumbling Cordon Sanitaire: Centre-Right Complicity and the EU Budget Threat to Roma Rights."

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The Roma Rights Review was published with the financial support of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the EU nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them. 🇪🇺

Anti-Roma racism isn't a fringe prejudice. It's once again becoming a central pillar of far-right mobilisation across Europe. Over this five-part-series, we're publishing articles drawn from the Roma Rights Review: Summer 2026 — the most comprehensive account of antigypsyism in Europe today.

Read the first article here: https://www.errc.org/news/the-normalisation-of-neo-fascism:-anti-roma-racism-at-the-heart-of-europes-far-right

Over 100 militarised police raids on Romani neighbourhoods in Greece since September 2025. Drones, dogs, and riot squads at dawn. The EU Commission's response? "Not our competence."

Decades of court rulings and human rights bodies say Greece can't be trusted to police itself fairly. But the Commission is looking the other way anyway. Find out how jurisdictional technicality leaves Roma unprotected, and what the EU could still do about it if it chose to in the article by Jonathan Lee here: https://www.errc.org/news/deferring-to-lack-of-competence-eu-looks-away-as-police-continue-to-raid-romani-communities-in-greece

Back in June, AfD politicians showed up at Romani homes in Gelsenkirchen with brooms, demanding they clean up the streets. The story behind this far-right publicity stunt runs deeper however, and has been going on for twenty years.

EU expansion, racialised "poverty migration" panic, court rulings that opened the door, welfare law that locked people out, and new restrictions being passed right now. It's all connected.

Full piece by Joachim Krauß here: https://www.errc.org/news/how-germany-encoded-anti-roma-exclusion-into-its-welfare-law

🚨 Hungarian police stand by — or actively assist — while neo-fascists break into properties occupied by Roma and terrorize families. But no more, says the Ombudsman, who is finally demanding accountability from the police.

The Bűnvadászok's leader is an elected official. Their van was paid for by a political party. Their crimes are on YouTube.

After 16 years of blurred lines between the Orbán regime and far-right militias, is Hungary finally sending a signal that this time, this far-right group will face justice?

Full story here: https://www.errc.org/news/hungarian-police-warned-to-cease-collusion-with-neo-fascist-vigilantes

Today the Roma Rights Network publishes the Roma Rights Review: Summer 2026.

This bi-annual publication is the definitive assessment of the state of Roma rights across Europe, compiled from the direct testimony, legal casework, and field documentation of 34 member organisations across 18 countries.

The picture it paints is one of systematic dismantling.

Militarised police raids on Romani neighbourhoods in Greece have reached near-daily frequency under Operation ENTOS. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Slovakia, Serbia, and Greece in separate cases involving police torture, beatings, racist abuse, and failed investigations. Far-right extremists march in Waffen SS regalia, neo-Nazis firebomb a sleeping Romani family, all while centre-right parties continue to build tactical alliances the far-right. Governments in Italy, Slovenia, and Hungary have passed legislation that criminalises Romani communities, enables mass surveillance, apartheid, and permits child removal before birth.

At a time when activists need the most support, the proposed EU budget for 2028-2034 threatens to eliminate ring-fenced support for Roma equality and dissolve dedicated structures into generic funding pots.

Back in June 2026, we declared a state of acute crisis for Roma Rights in Europe. This publication is the evidence.

The Roma Rights Review is the successor to the Roma Rights Journal, the first and oldest academic human rights journal dedicated to Roma in Europe, published from 1996 until 2017. Reimagined for the current political climate, it is designed as a usable and actionable tool for anyone working to understand and improve the situation of Roma rights.

Read the full review here:https://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/5252_file1_rrn-summer-2026-final-proof-copy.pdf