Discrimination Against Roma In Eastern Europe

In Eastern Europe, the Roma are the largest, poorest minority group across the region and are subjected to varied forms of social & political exclusions. One survey of social attitudes in 3 European countries found 78% of those held negative views of Roma people. 
Roma children rarely complete secondary level education to gain appropriate qualifications and this has a knock-on effect which increases unemployment rates and poverty.
A number of publications such as the World Bank Study on the Roma uncovered 80% of Roma households in Bulgaria, 70% in Romania and 40% in Hungary qualify as poor. 
I will analyse the case law of discrimination against Roma leading up to the landmark Grand Chamber judgement of Nachova where we see the application of the increasingly contested standard of proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ established by the Court itself to show racial motivation.

I will also examine the case law after this judgement, where its observed the court is referring less to the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard and looking instead for the presence of racist verbal abuse and compare the approaches of the court in the education sector to the cases of police violence, this essay will seek to argue that Roma people are discriminated against in all aspects of life and that the Court is more willing to find discrimination in the education sector. 

Art 14 is an autonomous provision of the European Convention of Human Rights which contains a general prohibition of both direct & indirect in relation to the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by Convention & Protocols.
It is not without its critics with Sandra Fredman describing it Article 14 as ‘woefully inadequate as a constitutional equality