Bucharest / Rumania (RNC Agency) 05.08.1997

European Union officials and Roma leaders on Tuesday urged Romania to clamp down on discrimination and violence against Roma, cited by the EU as a hurdle to the country’s membership bid.

‘‘Despite positive developments, the situation of the Roma is still a weak point in Rumania,’’ Steffen Skovmand, a member of the European Commission’s delegation in Romania, told a news conference.

Skovmand said the European Commission’s recent report on EU enlargement highlighted concerns over treatment of Roma in east European countries seeking admission.

Last month, the Commission recommmended that the EU should start membership talks only with five East European countries -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia.Its report said only Slovakia failed to qualify for admission on political grounds. Other states generally met requirements except for their treatment of the Roma minority.

Rumania, home to one of the largest Roma communities in eastern Europe, was passed over for early entry. However, it won praise for implementing democratic reforms, including treatment of its large Hungarian minority, since centrists ousted ex-communists in last year’s elections.

‘‘The Roma represent between five and 20 percent of the population in many countries of the region,’’ said leading Rumanian Roma rights activist Nicolae Gheorghe.

‘‘In their daily life, they are subject to harassment and aggression. Public opinion should understand that Romania can join Europe only if it solves the plight of our minority.’’

Gheorghe said there was no reliable data throughout Eastern Europe on employment, health and education in Roma communities.

He cited violence against Roma by ‘‘skinhead’’ youth gangs in the Czech Republic, police brutality against them in Romania and Bulgaria, and labour and education discrimination in Hungary. Most violence went unpunished.

A post-communist census shows some 400,000 Roma live in Romania. But the European Commission’s report quotes Romanian Roma leaders as saying that the true figure is up to 3.5 million.

Romania’s police chief, General Pavel Abraham, told reporters there was no systematic police clampdown against Roma. ‘‘There’s no state policy in Rumania of discriminating against any minority whatsoever, ’’ he said.

Gheorghe called on media to stop portraying Roma as trouble-makers and criminals and on courts to be more lenient towards them.

He said courts had delivered two verdicts of suspended jail terms in 37 post-communist attacks in Rumania in which Roma had their homes gutted and were driven from their villages.

‘‘We want a strong, clear political signal that this is unacceptable,’’ Gheorghe said.