After this intense debate and harsh actions of French Government we can conclude as that the gypsies are hopeless to be integrated in the European lifestyle and should be returned there where they belong. I cannot agree with this approach which looks like a revelation for some of European leaders, because they are not really interested to watch carefully the issue and find a solution.

It is not my intention to criticize French Government for this action, they take such decisions having in mind only own political interests, but it sounds worthless. I can remember that previous French Governments (starting from XX century) applied same treatment to Central and North-Africans, without any success. They returned and now they still living and working in France, together with their families.

France sends now gypsies in Romania, after doing almost nothing for them or against their bad behaviors. We can remember that few years ago it was England, 15 years ago - Germany, in early 1990 Austria, and examples might continue. And we, as Romanians cannot blame these countries, because we are guilty to not integrating this ethnicity, as they say. Of course, you might conclude that in Romania is something like a “reservoir” of “bad gypsies” who invades the Western side of Europe without pity. If you intend so, you can find all kind of proves that gypsies are Romanians only because they have declared few years ago that their original name is “roma”. Using same approach, other people could affirm that the “roma” name of the gypsies has the roots in ancient Roman Empire.

I’ve been in Prague few weeks ago and I have seen on Euronews (the only station I was able to understand the language), for an entire week, an annoying reportage, re-broadcasted from TF3, which shown how bad are Romanians, how they discriminate gypsies, how they don’t want to offer to the gypsies the best living conditions, refuse to hire them, etc. In my opinion it is really stupid to blame Romania for not offering extraordinary living conditions to people not interested, while most of Romanians are living in poor conditions here and the things are not improving.

Of course, you cannot distinguish in a gypsy community who is bad and who is good by just looking from outside. And, as an additional difficulty, as any minority in a foreign country, they prefer to live together, no matter from which tribe they come. The easiest way to solve the problem is the verified “German approach”. Yes, French Government does not discover the ideal solution, same model was used by Germany in 1994. At that time of course Romania was not in the European Union and received few thousands of gypsies from Germany. These people were not necessary coming from Romania, but the decision was that any gypsy without identity card to be sent here. After that “great expulsion” they went at their homes, in Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary, etc. Some of them returned in Germany or went to other Western countries, taking care this time to not be expulsed again. The only mistake of French Government is that now, they are violating EU laws regarding European citizenship. And also they showed the internal weakness, not being able to control such communities. The camps were not built during last year, these are for several years and we cannot believe that local authorities haven’t seen its.

The approach to split Europe between “bad” and “good” Europeans does not lead anywhere. You cannot look only to the gypsies who are performing their folklore in front of you and neglect that this is only one facet of their people. The same approach was used for Africans few decades ago, some of European leaders saying: “we are impressed by your songs and dances, but you should stay at home and come here only when we will call you”.

But now the gypsy issue is at European level and we discuss about European citizens. Can European Union manage this issue? I don’t think so. Even in some countries the issue was masked for a while, but overall the bomb is ticking. And we discuss about a demographic bomb, since this type of population is growing rapidly, while “good” Europeans are aging and have less children. Ask statisticians what will happen in next 50 – 100 years with ethnic balance in Europe, if these tendencies will continue.

Romania was criticized in last 20 years for not integrating gypsies and now the theme is coming back. Many millions of Euros were spent by European Union for this purpose, but without major results. A lot of clever specialists studied this ethnicity in various ways, designed theoretical conclusions and realized pilot projects - very good looking on paper – about how to integrate gypsies in the modern society. We have hundreds of NGOs and foundations who are involved in integrating gypsies and spend money for this.

It seems that nobody cares about what these people wants and how they are organized. A lot of studies were conducted on their lifestyle, but it seems that no helpful conclusion was drawn. Each of these studies has as aim to find a “final solution” (not the Nazis’ approach) for whole ethnicity of gypsies, without taking in account that they are organized in different communities, each one with own characteristics, own habits and they rarely mix between various “tribes” of gypsies.

Gypsies’ communities are primary divided by professions, like those who are working with iron, those who are processing gold or silver, those who are entertainers, singers, etc. and a lot of these tribes are more or less stable. The most mobile and visible communities, which Occidental World see as invades, are the professionals of begging, theft and prostitution, because they don’t need any support for their infamous professions.

Beside their common origins and lifestyle, gypsies’ tribes have many similarities and can be approached as an entire ethnicity, but by taking in account their local leaders and organizations. Each type of community should be treated in a different way and it must be understood that they are organized like ancient tribes, each having own leader, called “bulibasha” in Romania. You should consider that they have “All Mighty King”, “Worldwide Emperor”, and more such titles, without any real significance, because these are recognized only locally. Of course, they tried to organize in a regional way, I remember that, few years ago they had something like a Congress in Bulgaria with gypsies’ leaders from Balkans. After a good start, they started to argue which of them will be the “Supreme Leader of Gypsies” and the Congress finished.

This type of organization makes them to live in ”closed” communities, even they are thousand of kilometers away from their original community. Most of the money obtained abroad, legally or illegally, goes by underground channels for the welfare of their leaders. And these leaders need to have less educated subjects, who believe in traditions which are coming from ancient times, preferably without any other success model than the leader.

Gypsies does not discriminate any nation or territory and, if we need to find a classical quote for defining their status, we can use the ancient “ubi bene ibi patria”. They don’t like in particular to live in Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, France or wherever, if they can obtain easier advantages elsewhere. They will try all the time to find the easiest way to live, according their standards, and, as they have the philosophy to live the moment, they will try to get something where they see wealth, by any means.

Romania applies the “positive discrimination” from ca. five years, without any visible success. It is frustrating for the majority of people to see that there are “reserved” places for gypsies in schools, including universities, but gypsies does not seems interested in these facilities.

Their life models are not educated, but they have money, and are not relevant for them how these models obtained the money, legally or not. As an example, local gypsies’ leader have huge houses, few luxury cars and they declare without a blink at TV stations that they should not pay taxes. Why? Because in their traditions they never paid taxes and they are poor unemployed people. And it is true, as they never were employed, because the Romanians are discriminating them as Euronews shown. The Romanian authorities have not enough strength to force them to declare how they obtained their fortunes. It’s a good life model, which everybody is able to understand: having everything you want, without working, keeping gypsy traditional way of life and ignoring actual social organization.

So, even all conditions will be created for some people, in this case the gypsies, they cannot be forced to become more educated, to become good citizens and to change their lifestyle if they don’t desire this and their success models are not in this area.

Some useful links to check:

- Additional info

http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/?p=51377

http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/destinations/east/gypsy.htm

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2019316,00.html

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/30-07-2010/114435-france_gypsies-0/

- And some art videos on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcSCSR287Hw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIkAK6KRjFE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2TT6tyIrUA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp7DapGFisc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzJRmTX-BKo