04/10/2010 Session
“Many of you know that it is the principle of non-discrimination which is of particular importance to me. During the last couple of months, it has been the issue of the Roma population in Europe which has raised serious questions about discrimination. On 20 August, I declared that I was shocked by recent outrages against Roma in Europe. Measures taken in some European countries certainly did not help to improve the integration of this vulnerable minority and I warned that they were likely to lead to an increase in racist and xenophobic feelings in Europe,” said PACE President Mevlüt Çavusoglu today at the opening of the Assembly’s autumn session in Strasbourg.
He called for a much-needed political impetus to be given to existing national and international efforts for the sustainable integration of Roma. Welcoming the Secretary General’s initiative in convening a high-level meeting on Roma on 20 October 2010 at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, he said he was confident that the work done by the Assembly in this field, including the urgent debate proposed for Thursday, would be taken into account in the final declaration of this meeting.
He pointed out that he would also be raising the issue of integration with the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Westerwelle, at their meeting later in the day. “For me,” he concluded, “integration does not mean assimilation. We must succeed in combining the legitimate demands of states asking for more integration efforts on the part of migrants, especially as regards learning the language of the receiving country, with the need to preserve cultural and religious traditions of migrants”.