[Bilimsel Haber] Minority report - "Roman" gözünden Avrupa Parlamentosu ve hep de "renkli"lerle bir tutulan Türkler

[Gonul Pultar]

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*EUROPEAN ROMA INFORMATION OFFICE*

www.erionet.org <http://www.erionet.org>**
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*Minority report*

There are 785 MEPs in the European parliament. Of which only nine are 
non-white. Why is no one up in arms about it?

It is not Livia Jaroka's youth or talent that mark her out in the beige 
corridors of the European parliament, but her skin. Jaroka, a 
centre-right MEP for Hungary, was nominated for a parliamentary award 
for her conscientious work last year. The response? A Bulgarian 
objected, arguing that she did not deserve it. "In my country, there are 
tens of thousands of Gypsy girls way more beautiful," Dimitar Stoyanov 
wrote in an email to MEPs. "In fact, if you're in the right place at the 
right time you even can buy one (around 12-13 years old) to be your 
loving wife. The best of them are very expensive - up to ?5,000 a piece, 
wow!"

Jaroka is Roma, one of two representatives in the European parliament 
who are from what is now the largest homogeneous ethnic minority in the 
European Union. The "Gypsy girl" email met with widespread condemnation 
within the parliament building, but Stoyanov, then an observer in the 
parliament, since Bulgaria had not yet joined the EU, duly took his seat 
as a fully fledged MEP last month, part of the new far-right coalition 
that includes fascists and Holocaust deniers in Europe's premier 
democratic institution.

A walk through the European parliament in Brussels challenges some of 
the prejudices peddled by the British press. We are told the European 
project is stalled, sclerotic and bureaucratic, but there is a buzz 
here. The chamber - all blond wood and black office chairs - is packed; 
the lifts echo with earnest chat in all 23 "official" languages. New 
countries, political groups and, increasingly, laws that affect us all 
are being formed here. Once dismissed as a talking shop, parliament has 
a hand in most European legislation. Its power is not doubted by the 
young European elites who compete for jobs or the legion of lobbyists, 
who would not waste their time working its cafes and committee rooms if 
parliament did not matter.

With 785 representatives from 27 member countries and chambers in 
Brussels and Strasbourg, it is the world's only directly elected 
international chamber. It represents a more diverse range of people than 
almost any other - 492 million European citizens. It is also almost 
completely white, and it is against this backdrop that Stoyanov's 
inclusion starts to make sense.

There are just nine non-white MEPs here, 1.1% of the total. Five of them 
come from Britain. Add MEPs of recent Turkish/Kurdish descent and there 
are a grand total of 13 MEPs whose ethnic origins could be said to lie 
outside Europe. It is estimated (part of the problem is no one in the 
EU, and few of its member states, are counting properly) that at least 
5% of the population of the EU - 25 million and rising - is non-white. 
This figure does not include the eight million Roma in the EU, of whom 
Jaroka and another Hungarian Roma MEP are the only two to make it into 
parliament.

The chamber in Brussels is housed in two sleek glass blocks a stone's 
throw from narrow streets filled with North African grocers and 
Vietnamese cafes. Within its walls, every face seems to be white. As 
well as MEPs, almost all those legendary Brussels bureaucrats are white. 
So are security staff. This whiteness stunned Claude Moraes, a London 
MEP who was raised in Scotland by Indian parents, when he first arrived 
in Brussels. "I grew up in an all-white town and an all-white school. 
When I came here, it hit me hard that it was so ethnically non-diverse 
and that no one spots it or cares about it," he says. "You walk out of 
this place and there is complete ethnic diversity in Brussels - from 
Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Come here and that's all over, unless 
you arrive at 5am when the cleaners are in."

Neena Gill was elected as a Labour MEP alongside Moraes eight years ago. 
She is the only Asian woman in parliament. "Nobody would believe me when 
I said, 'Britannique'. Only two nights ago I was at a function and this 
Belgian found it really hard to accept that I was an MEP because I was 
wearing a sari," she says. "I hear phrases such as, 'Madame Gill is 
wearing oriental costume.' When they realise you're Indian, people say, 
'Why aren't you wearing that spot on your head?' It is the sort of thing 
that would have been said in Britain 35 years ago."

Ethnic-minority MEPs who have climbed this white political ladder are 
not over-sensitive souls. But Gill admits she feels "uncomfortable" if 
seated next to a neo-fascist. (The far right easily out-numbers the 
non-white MEPs here: the new Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group has 
19 members.) "I've got used to it now but initially I felt quite 
intimidated. It's threatening. This man thinks I shouldn't be here. If 
he was in power, you don't know where they would stop. They are 
intolerant; they don't want to understand; they don't want you playing 
your part in society; they don't see you as an equal. That's pretty 
unpleasant."

I am dining in the huge parliamentary restaurant with Syed Kamall, a 
charming, blunt Conservative MEP of Guyanese descent, who was born in 
London, when the French National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, sits 
down at the next table. Le Pen, convicted of inciting racial hatred in 
France, stares over, inscrutable, chewing on a bread stick. In here, it 
seems, this shrunken white-haired extremist is a celebrity. A waiter 
approaches and shakes Le Pen's hand. The three black waiters running 
between tables are not dispatched to serve Le Pen's coterie.

Kamall, who has no truck with hand-wringing lefty verbiage, grins 
rebelliously. "I've always wanted to go over to his daughter - because 
she's in parliament as well - and greet her with a kiss on the cheek in 
front of him. It amuses me. He doesn't speak to me but one of them [in 
France's National Front] does. He always says hello. They like to say 
they are not racist but ..." He shrugs. "I'm very lucky to come from 
London - it's very different from the rest of Europe. I've been to parts 
of Europe where I've been the only dark face. In some way, I relish 
that. Just being here sends a message."

As part of the centre-right European People's party group, Kamall and 
his Conservative colleague Nirj Deva, born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and 
raised in Britain, are pretty unusual. Their EPP colleagues, the German 
Christian Democrats, are the biggest single party in parliament and do 
not have a single non-white or Turkish MEP. A German Christian Democrat 
once told the British Asian MEP Claude Moraes: "We would never have 
someone like you in our party elected in Germany."

Parliament passed a race equality directive in 2000 (currently not fully 
implemented by many member states) but several MEPs say their colleagues 
don't engage with ethnic minority issues. Viktoria Mohasci, the second 
Roma MEP, does not believe parliamentarians would tell her to "go home" 
to her face. "But in my work if you raise Roma issues, most people 
smile," she says. "If I speak of how Roma kids in schools are not 
getting as many qualifications, most people smile and say the Roma 
produce these kids - they are to blame. They don't take it seriously."

Across the political spectrum, ethnic minority MEPs struggle to get 
colleagues interested in campaigning for a parliament that is roughly 
reflective of the ethnic mix of Europe's people. Islam, immigration and 
integration are increasingly tense subjects across Europe. This 
parliament is tackling them with all-white representatives. But no one 
seems too bothered.

Here is an astonishing fact: no one knows how many non-white 
parliamentary officials there are here because no one is counting. Yet 
the European parliament is the sort of place where every paperclip is 
logged, in triplicate. There were exactly 37,091 people - civil 
servants, administrators and other staff - working for the European 
parliament, European Commission and other EU bodies in 2006 (far fewer 
than in Eurosceptic legend). But there is no way of telling how many are 
non-white. Officials estimate that it is probably "a handful".

In parliament, any debate about this has yet to begin. Everywhere you 
turn, progressive politics are being practised. Sensitivity towards the 
diversity of nationalities and languages is so acute as to encourage 
parody: Gaelic was recently made the EU's 23rd official language with 
its own translation box in the chamber - meaning that parliament must 
find those elusive Gaelic speakers who also understand Bulgarian or 
Hungarian. There is a gender committee looking at equal opportunities 
and rights for women. And yet there is no committee examining ethnic 
discrimination. European politicians think they are "colour-blind", 
argues Moraes, but parliament's whiteness is "symptomatic of what 
happens when you pretend discrimination doesn't exist".

Moraes would like the ethnic monitoring of parliament's workforce - a 
basic recording of the background of the workforce, widely accepted by 
British companies and institutions. "It shows you where you are going 
wrong and then you can put something in place to correct it," he says. 
For other countries, however, it is anathema. "You can't get the concept 
of monitoring accepted here," says Gill. "There is a real reluctance to 
deal with it, particularly because the French have the attitude that 
they just see themselves as French. White French will say a person is 
French and from an African background but one or two of the black French 
I've met say, 'We're French and we don't want monitoring'."

Of course, MEPs point out, you do not need to be from a particular 
community to speak up for its interests. "You don't have to be a Muslim 
to represent Muslims," says Sajjad Karim, a Lib Dem MEP from the 
north-west who is one of a handful of Muslims in parliament. But Karim 
and others, such as Kamall, like to stress the practical benefits of 
having MEPs from diverse backgrounds. It is particularly useful in trade 
or diplomatic manoeuvres with senior politicians beyond Europe, they 
say. Karim has undertaken missions to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, 
where officials assumed he was from their Brussels embassies. "When they 
realised I was an MEP, it was fantastic because we were changing their 
view of what Europe was about."

The few non-white MEPs try to avoid being stereotyped as token experts 
on race or immigration. But it is a telling sign of their rarity that 
many are inundated with appeals from people in other countries who share 
their ethnicity or religion. As well as being the only Asian woman in 
parliament, Gill is the only Sikh too. She says she receives "almost 
weekly" calls from Sikh groups in Italy and France who are attacked 
because of "the turban issue".

The sprinkling of non-white or Turkish MEPs from France, Germany and the 
Netherlands are reluctant to accuse their fellow MEPs of discrimination. 
Instead, they focus on how hard it is for people from ethnic minorities 
to get into politics. "People need time to build up networks in society. 
Immigrants start very low in terms of jobs and education and they need 
time to catch up," says Emine Bozkurt. Born in Holland to Turkish 
parents, in 2004 she became the first MEP elected from the Netherlands 
with ethnic minority heritage. "People refer to me as a migrant but I've 
never migrated apart from when I moved to the European parliament. Then 
I really felt like a migrant."

To British eyes, Socialist MEP Kader Arif is classically French: pale 
pink shirt unbuttoned at the neck, smoking, philosophical. His French 
assistant refers to him as "black". Hugely popular in south-western 
France, Arif attributes his political ascent to his accent which, 
reassuringly for his constituents, is a strong Toulouse drawl. His 
passions - rugby and bullfighting - show he is well integrated, he says, 
since coming to France from Algeria aged five.

The reason there are so few non-white MEPs, Arif says, is because of the 
social environment and the nature of political careers. You find more 
immigrants in sport and culture because there talent can be objectively 
recognised and rewards are instant - unlike in politics, he says. "When 
you get recognised in sports or culture, this breaks all social 
barriers; politics is made up of social barriers."

He believes there is racism across the board in French political 
parties. All of them, he says, conservatively recruit in their own 
image. But he was elected first in the list of 10 MEPs in their National 
Front-friendly constituency of 8.5 million people. "It shows that 
sometimes the masses are in advance of the political elites," he says.

For Moraes, the whiteness of the European parliament is not simply 
because alienated, unconfident minorities shun politics. "Confidence of 
the individual is a small part," he says. "A large part is direct and 
indirect discrimination. Where do you advertise jobs? Do you encourage 
schools in particular parts of Europe? Is there real accessibility? Do 
people apply from non-traditional backgrounds?"

If you judge power by the size of an office then, as the adage goes, the 
bureaucrats really are running Europe. Julian Priestley is the outgoing 
secretary general, the parliament's top civil servant. After three 
decades working in Europe, he talks of "broadening the diversity agenda" 
in carefully honed sentences that are almost as long as his desk.

"It is true that at the moment the number of people from ethnic 
minorities working here is way below the proportion of European citizens 
from ethnic minorities," he says. The problem is recruitment. "I have a 
horrible feeling that when European institutions place advertisements 
announcing competitions [for training and employment] there will be part 
of ethnic minority communities who will feel it's not really for them. 
We should work with those communities to make sure that candidates come 
forward."

He considers ethnic monitoring "interesting" but fears it would be 
blocked by his colleagues who find it "intrusive". And, he adds: "You 
don't need ethnic minority monitoring to know we're not doing very 
well." Is the parliament institutionally racist? "I think that would be 
unfair. The numbers are insufficient because we haven't been imaginative 
enough and active enough as all institutions together to take positive 
measures for people to come forward. We've been slower than certain 
parts of public administrations in the member states and I recognise that."

As the sun sinks and the colours slip out of Brussels, Arif smokes at 
his desk on the 14th floor of the European parliament and ponders 
whether this building is equipped to tackle questions of religion, race, 
immigration and identity that define modern Europe. "It's not because 
I'm from a minority that I can fight racism," he says. "But if you don't 
have institutions that represent the diversity of Europe you can't fight 
against racism properly".

*Path to power: How MEPs are elected*

The European parliament is created by the largest democratic election 
outside India. The only directly elected institution in the EU, its 785 
MEPs from 27 member states sit in chambers in Brussels and Strasbourg. 
Countries are given representatives based on their size, so Germany has 
99 and Malta has five. Since 1979, elections are held every five years 
and every adult citizen in the EU can vote. The last elections were in 
2004; the next will be in 2009.

Candidates are chosen by, and stand for, national parties. In the UK, 
MEPs are elected by proportional representation from large, multi-member 
constituencies, such as north-west England and London. Voters in East 
Anglia, for instance, have elected seven constituency MEPs, including 
Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem representatives who they can ask for 
help on European matters.

Once in parliament, MEPs join European political groupings of 
like-minded MEPs from other member states. The biggest grouping is 
currently the European People's party, a centre-right group that 
includes German Christian Democrats and British Conservative MEPs. 
Labour MEPs are part of the Socialist group, the second largest.

Despite there now being 492 million voters in the EU, the turnout for 
parliament's elections is low - in 2004 it was 45.5% across the EU (and 
just 16.96% in Slovakia for example).

*Odd ones out*

Europe's non-white MEPs

Counting those of Turkish descent and two Romas, there are 15 MEPs whose 
origins lie outside Europe:

*UK*

MEPs: 78. Five non-white MEPs: two Labour, two Conservative, one Lib Dem

*Germany *

MEPs: 99. Three MEPs of Turkish/Kurdish descent: one socialist, one 
green, one Euro left/Nordic green

*France*

MEPs: 78. Three non-white MEPs: two socialist, one European People's party

*Hungary*

MEPs: 24. Two Roma MEPs: one European People's party, one Alliance of 
Liberals and Democrats

*The Netherlands*

MEPs: 27. One non-white MEP of Turkish descent: socialist

*Belgium*

MEPs: 24. One non-white MEP: socialist None of the other 21 EU member 
states has any non-white MEPs, despite significant ethnic minority 
populations in countries such as Italy (78 MEPs) and Spain (54 MEPs)

Patrick Barkham, *Guardian 
<http://politics.guardian.co.uk/eu/comment/0,,2012519,00.html>*
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/Wednesday February 14, 2007, Brussels/
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Ivan Ivanov, Executive Director, ERIO.
Ivan.Ivanov at erionet.org <mailto:Ivan.Ivanov at erionet.org>
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