Financial Times
By JUDY DEMPSEY

The European Union and central and eastern European countries were yesterday called to task for failing systemically to secure protection of minorities in the applicant states, according to reports published by the independent Open Society Institute (OSI) financed by George Soros. The reports, one on the minorities, the other on judicial independence, paint a grim picture showing how all the candidate countries too often pay lip service to protecting minorities while the judiciary is still subject to political interference and often corruption. Even though the European Union, the Commission and the European Parliament have done much to improve legislation in both fields, the OSI said the EU should take the lead in ensuring greater consistency in their own minority protection law and practice and applying their criteria to the candidate countries. `The EU must take its own criteria for the accession process seriously,` said Aryeh Neier, OSI president. `It should not set criteria if it is not willing to see them through,` he added. The Roma communities, especially in Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech republic and Bulgaria are still subject to widespread discrimination. `Pervasive prejudice contributes to a broad range of more subtle, but equally pernicious, discriminatory practices,` said the report. No country in the region, it adds, has yet adopted comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation in full compliance with the Race Equality Directive adopted by the European Council last year. In some cases, governments, particularly in Hungary, do not speak out against racism and anti-semitism. `I find it very troubling,` said Mr Soros. The Baltic states fare no better either in the treatment of the Russian minority. In Latvia and Estonia, says the report, most of the Russian-speaking minority still lack citizenship. In Latvia, particularly at local council levels, there are policies and legislation that restrict the Russians - including citizens - to minority education, use of their language and the labour market.

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