/ world today news/ Six hundred million euros – that’s the amount of funds from the European social fund not used by Romania and Bulgaria.
They are intended for the integration of the Roma, whose situation in the two Balkan countries continues to be catastrophic. There, Roma live in ghetto-like settlements; they are discriminated against in terms of access to education, and if they find any work at all, it is necessarily unattractive and low-paid, writes Tageszeitung.
The publication quotes the Minister of Integration of North Rhine-Westphalia Guntram Schneider, who says that the “deplorable administrative structures” in Romania and Bulgaria are to blame for this situation.
Against this background, the government of North Rhine-Westphalia has decided to “fight” for this money by persuading Brussels to redirect it to Germany.
Schneider claims that many German municipalities are badly affected by the influx of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants and are in desperate need of these funds.
“It’s entirely possible if we just ask for it,” he told reporters in Düsseldorf. However, according to Schneider, Bulgaria and Romania should be given another chance. He suggests sending expert groups to both countries, for example from Germany or France, to help local authorities improve their work. “However, if after that there are still unspent funds, say because of corruption, then these funds should be made available to the countries that are affected by the migration problem,” said the Minister of Integration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Schneider assures that this request is also supported by Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin. In Brussels, however, it is not particularly popular – during a visit to North Rhine-Westphalia, the European Commissioner for Social Policy Laszlo Andor refrained from making promises in this direction.
“Tageszeitung” notes that the 18 million inhabitants of the province of North Rhine-Westphalia include less than 90 thousand Romanians and Bulgarians, of which about 17 thousand are newly arrived. The KNA news agency points out that the majority of them are qualified, and that only a few cities – such as Duisburg, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen and Hagen – have problems with Bulgarian and Romanian citizens.
On the same topic, the EPD news agency writes that restricting migration in the way the Swiss decided to do is not a solution for Germany. And the Minister of Integration of North Rhine-Westphalia considers this decision wrong. According to him, modern societies that turn against migration are pruning the branch they are sitting on – especially where demographic problems lead to the aging of societies.
The newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine writes on the subject that the predicted wave of Bulgarians and Romanians, who were supposed to flood Germany after the restrictions on them in the German labor market were lifted, never happened. “To date, no increased ‘poverty migration’ from South-Eastern Europe has been observed,” the publication states. This is also confirmed by the data of several regional labor offices cited in the publication.
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