For George Soros, Roma are victims of the crisis

“The situation of the Roma [in Europe] amounts to the most serious case of ethnic discrimination and exclusion,” claims George Soros, in an interview with Romanian weekly Dilema Veche. The American billionaire, who has created a number of support organisations for Romania’s Roma, believes that the community —

… which was already the victim of human rights violations and social exclusion, is one of the worst affected by the economic crisis and the poverty it has engendered. This has been compounded by the growing hostility to the Roma among the majority of the population, which also has to contend with economic difficulties. Worse still, the situation is being exploited by populist politicians.

For Soros, the Roma's situation has been aggravated by the EU's solutions to the crisis. The impact of these solutions has been —

… to transform the EU into something that is radically different to what it should be: a voluntary association among equals. In contrast, today’s Union amounts to a forced relationship between creditors and debtors, in which the creditors dictate the terms. [...] We should go back to what the EU was in the beginning, and a euro that is an appropriate tool for this purpose.

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