Doc. 9528

23 July 2002

Specialist Group on Roma’s report on the visit to Greece

Written Question No. 411

Reply from the Committee of Ministers

adopted at the 805^th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (17 July 2002)

I.       Written Question No. 411 by Mr Boriss Cilevičs (Doc. 9442)

According to information provided on the official website of the Council of Europe, the Specialist Group on Roma has carried out four urgent actions, each of which led to a report, including a fact-finding mission to Greece on 10-12 June 2001.

The latter urgent action, carried out by the Chair of the Specialist Group, was a field visit to Greece (10-12 June 2001) to observe the situation of Roma in settlements in Aspropyrgos, Halandri, Marousi (Olympic Stadium) and Spata which are close to Athens.

In the meantime, no report on the mission to Greece is available on the Council of Europe website.

Mr Cilevičs,

To ask the Committee of Ministers,

—       whether the report on the Specialist Group's field visit to Greece is to be made available to the members of the Parliamentary Assembly and if it will be placed in the public domain;

—       what the reason is for such a substantial delay in the preparation of this report.

II.        Reply from the Committee of Ministers

On the occasion of a seminar on Roma issues, organised by an NGO in Athens in June 2001, the Council of Europe participants to that seminar had contacts with the authorities and other personalities on the situation of some Roma settlements in the vicinity of Athens.

As this visit was not officially requested by the Specialist Group on Roma/Gypsies (MG-S-ROM), no report was drawn up on the above contacts, as inadvertently mentioned in the Council of Europe’s website. This reference is being corrected accordingly.

The Committee of Ministers has now approved a system of regular visits to all member states in order to monitor the implementation of its recommendations and a set of rules has been drawn up to govern these field visits.