The right to adequate housing is not recognized by the Romanian legislation - representatives of Amnesty International claimed, warning that this gap affected the Roma people the most.

The International Organization noted that in the recent years the Roma communities of various cities of the country were evicted in violation of the international procedure required in such cases.

Moreover, the Roma people were moved to the outskirts of cities and lost their jobs and their access to social services and schools.

The representatives of Amnesty International asked the Romanian authorities to align to the European law in this field by amending the Housing Law.

The poor Roma people in Romania do not have access to adequate housing because of the national legal system and discrimination to which they are subjected by the local authorities.

It was the main conclusion emerging from a report released by Amnesty International.

Romanian law does not prohibit forced evictions

The current provisions of the national legislation only regulate the relationship between tenants and owners, providing that a tenant can be evicted only with a court ruling.

Representatives of human rights NGOs criticized the way local authorities in different cities managed the forced evictions of the Roma people and urged the Romanian government and the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism to change the current Romanian legal framework in terms of housing.

"These revisals of the law should include a legal provision to prohibit forced evictions and a mini guide explaining how one can make these discharges, if they are any. "

"For example, this mini guide should contain a definition of the adequate housing, to go beyond the physical aspects of a house, that includes a ban on building houses in certain places or people moving to areas that can not be inhabited because they are insalubrious, and last but not least, a revisal of the criteria by which you can access social housing", Fotiş Filippou, a researcher in the Programme for Europe and Central Asia of Amnesty International said.

According to the latest statistics, in Romania there are around 2 million Roma people, which is about 10 percent of the total population and three quarters of them live in poverty.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University