ECRI Report, (fourth monitoring cycle). Published on 03 June 2014
Country
Romania
Year
Type of publication
Geographical coverage
National
Area/location of interest
Type of Institution
Council of Europe body
Institution
Main Thematic Focus
Racism & xenophobia Discrimination Ethnic profiling
Target Population
Muslims Migrants Ethnic minorities People with migrant background Refugees & asylum seekers
Key findings
Weak responsiveness of the authorities to the expressions of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, abuses against Roma. • Hungarian minority experiences discrimination too.
• Minority religious groups are frequently faced with unjustified refusals from the local authorities in relation to the granting of construction permits for places of worship.
• there is no single institution mandated with the systematic collection of data on the breach of criminal law provisions against racism and that the information is therefore fragmented.
• ECRI has been informed that there has been an improvement as concerns the number of articles in the national press and the number of advertisements in the media which are of a racist nature. This improvement, however, does not appear to be mirrored at the local level and on the Internet.
• Hostile views with regard to the Roma are still echoed by the press and the audiovisual media, which continue to present negative and stereotypical images of the Roma. The same can be said as concerns many comments and articles published on the Internet.
• Many racist comments disseminated through the Internet don’t meet with a criminal response.
• public insults and defamation against a person or a grouping of persons on the grounds of their “race”, colour, language, religion, citizenship or national/ethnic origin are not prohibited under the criminal law.
Methodology (Qualitative/Quantitative and exact type used, questionnaires etc)
The working methods for the preparation of the reports involve documentary analyses, a visit to the country concerned, and then a confidential dialogue with the national authorities.
Sample details and representativeness
ECRI’s reports are analyses based on a great deal of information gathered from a wide variety of sources.