On December 15, EURoma Technical Secretariat participated at one of the regular consultation meetings the European Commission holds with representatives of the civil society and international organizations. The focus of this meeting was to inform such organizations about the 2016 Report on Roma and specifically about the reporting framework template to be used. National Roma Contact Points (NRCPs) have already received the template and they can invite other stakeholders to contribute to their final consolidate report. The Commission wishes to complement official reports with the views of civil society.
Member States have the obligation (as of January 2016) to report on their measures under the 2013
Proposal for a Council Recommendation on effective Roma integration measures in the Member States
. At the same time, the Commission will also assess the progress under the
EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies
The two reporting exercises will be merged and the Commission assessment will be presented in two documents:
- a political narrative on the progress under the EU Framework, and for the first time, the measures reported under the Council Recommendation, and
- a country-by-country assessment in a Staff Working Document.
The procedure and deadlines for adopting these documents fall under the competence of Commissioners Jourova and Vice-President Timmermans. Civil society must send their contributions by
29thJanuary 2016. At the beginning of 2016 there will be further meetings to fine-tune such tool, with NRCP and also with civil society.
The Commission informed that this is the pilot phase of a comparable and structured reporting tool and the relevance of testing it with as many counterparts as possible. The template to be used by civil society has been adjusted to meet the requirements for shadow reporting, facilitating its use by civil society and international organizations. In parallel, work is ongoing for the definition of indicators, constitution of a database and development of an online tool for the next reporting exercise. This reporting tool will gather detailed information of ESI funds allocation to projects aiming at Roma inclusion operating at local, regional and national level in all Member States.
The reporting template for civil society is available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/roma/eu-framework/index_en.htm
