The Roma Movement: The Legacy and Values of George Soros and Nicolae Gheorghe

Gheorghe and Mirga (2001) defined the Roma movement as a ‘collage’ consisting of Romani international organizations, local and national associations, as well as individual Romani activists. The Roma movement over the past three decades has played an important role in seeking to highlight the acute marginalization facing many of Europe’s 12 million Roma.

Open Society Foundations (OSF), a major actor in the Roma movement for the past three decades, supported by the philanthropist billionaire George Soros, has recently announced its intention to establish a Europe-wide Roma Foundation.

The Roma Foundation will have a budget to allow it to operate for the next decade and will continue the work of OSF’s Roma Initiatives Office (RIO), which currently coordinates OSF Roma related projects. The Roma Foundation is likely to have major implications for the Roma movement. The importance of transparency and connectivity to the Roma community within civil society and the emergence of the Roma Foundation are coinciding with a Europe on the verge of an energy crisis with unpredictable severe economic impacts and continuing turmoil from the war in Ukraine. On top of this, the latest round of elections in Europe, most notably in Italy, reveals a rebirth of extreme right-wing parties with explicit anti-minority agendas.

Successes and failures

The last three decades of Roma activism have witnessed important achievements in effectively lobbying for new national and European inclusion policies, most notably the EU Strategic Roma Framework, have given valuable organizational and campaigning experience to Roma, and in some cases have played a critical role in pilot projects and even innovative support and service delivery. There have also been serious failures (see below). Nonetheless, the EU is continuing to keep inclusion of European Roma as a priority on the public agenda.

The Roma movement has sometimes been too “top-down”, reflecting the aspirations of a small elite, often symptomatic of a disconnection between the grassroots organization within Roma communities and the international Roma movement (consisting of various organizations headquartered in European metropolises). The discrepancy is widening in terms of consultation and participation in the policy development arena, especially at the national and EU level, where consultations are hijacked by some elites who are “tolerated by institutions” as conforming, reliable partners.

Critics assert that forms of cronyism subvert the autonomy and vigor of the Roma movement. Some activists posit that barriers are erected from inside Roma structures as well, for example, by those who are perceived as “gatekeepers” (possibly an unintended consequence of liberal civil society paradigms) and are serving the donor agenda rather than communities’ interests. The movement has also at times been too aligned with narrow identity politics and neoliberal policy agendas to the neglect of more fundamental socioeconomic and intersectional considerations. This might come from the “trickle down” paradigm of development imposed by some donors, believing that investing in a Roma elite and leadership would trigger better representation of Roma at the local level and would boost wider community development.

The Roma Foundation could provide an opportunity for a major reset, or else merely continue past failed policy initiatives – which is why we believe it is an opportune time to revisit the concepts of Social Europe and community empowerment at this juncture. We are arguing for a genuine, critical debate, a deeper discussion that is needed now more than ever.

The need for open dialogue

Some critics argue that the announcement by the Open Society Foundations of a new Europe-wide Roma Foundation, with a grant that would allow it to be funded for a decade, is another illustration of top-down decision making, as ideally there should have been a consultation with stakeholders before unveiling the Roma Foundation. It should be noted, though, that the Roma Education Fund has pledged itself to a consultation with stakeholders as to its future work, and activists are calling for RIO/Open Society Foundations to mount a similar dialogue on the new Roma Foundation.

Activists are arguing that since a key principle promoted by Soros-supported actors has been for the EU to empower Roma communities and activists, it would be deeply disappointing if RIO/Open Society Foundations failed to apply such principles to the work of the Roma Foundation. The fact that Soros wishes to establish an autonomous Roma Foundation indicates that he is aware of the need to give his Roma-related work more independence, but careful steps will need to be taken to ensure this.

Working in a hostile environment

It is instructive to note that despite individual efforts at the forefront of key empowerment initiatives, the broader environment for NGOs is harsh, even for well-known organizations, when it comes to strengthening their long-term sustainability. Building alliances and closer coordination of Roma and pro-Roma entities could be the solution for opposing the current hostile environment, especially in the present time when there is a resurgence of the far-right within Europe. This is a fundamental reason why the formation of the Roma Foundation should be based upon open debate and discussion.

During the pandemic, observers noted the hostile environment for Roma NGOs and how the Roma communities were abandoned by the authorities – indeed, some were demonized for allegedly spreading COVID-19. Many local organizations curtailed their activities because of administrative, funding and legal challenges. Some observers feel institutional racism by donors and the state is in part responsible for the current hardships faced by Roma NGOs.

The COVID crisis was a moment of supreme challenge and underscored the importance of the social structures at the grassroots level, their resilience, and how they might come up with direct, viable solutions in contrast to the international organizations, which are mainly focused on lobbying and advocacy work in different capitals of Europe. However, the international organizations need to take note of these lessons and articulate them in their advocacy work.

New approaches

Nicolae Gheorghe was a key Romani activist and thinker who felt that Romani civic associations had gradually lost their autonomy and organizational capacity and had become dependent clients or protected customers of their paymasters, in other words, steered by donor-driven agendas. Foucault has described such hijacking of civil society as “governmentality”.

Some critics would argue that forms of governmentality have steered sections of the Romani movement into narrow inclusion agendas centered on assimilation and a neoliberal conception of society that envisages change coming about through individual reform, most notably through education and training, rather than through deep structural change.

Gheorghe hoped Romani NGOs would become self-help groups which would not be reliant on donors, fostering grassroots community development. Inspired by Gheorghe and others, we are calling for community-based activism and “reverse governmentality” whereby, rather than government using civil society as a tool to impose narrow inclusion/assimilation policies (“governmentality”), we would see instead a situation where Romani civil society is in the driving seat and given a more meaningful role in directing both Member State governments and the European Commission as to what needs to be done within local communities. The Roma Foundation could play a valuable role and set a strong example in such innovation.

Moving away from neoliberal and narrow identity politics, the Roma Foundation needs to link poverty and inequality to interpretations of human rights, creating an opening where inequality and poverty can be understood and addressed in terms of challenging the deprivation of capabilities or lack of empowerment and as a denial and even a violation of human rights. Hence, a human rights framework can involve anti-poverty strategies, a concrete parameter for providing legal remedies, and measure state compliance with international human rights obligations.

All these can be collectively harnessed within a Social Europe framework that would see the EU place greater emphasis on socioeconomic metrics in its policy vis-à-vis Roma inclusion and a redistributive European social policy. Such a re-conceptualization of poverty moves away from personal shaming and the pathologization of poverty that brands the Roma as indolent and welfare-dependent. A radical conception of human rights identifies a dual politics of both redistribution and of recognition/respect, since its entitlements encompass socioeconomic, citizenship and cultural rights.

A Roma Foundation could play an important role in this reconceptualization of human rights through its transnational advocacy work, helping to further a Social Europe agenda across the EU and beyond. It is noteworthy that Members of the European Parliament recently sought to promote what can be considered a Social Europe agenda on the situation of Romani people living in settlements in Europe on behalf of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs of the European Parliament. This resolution proposes bold actions to end Roma ghettoization and marginalization across the EU Member States, including the oversight of EU and national funding earmarked for projects that would further the goal of Romani inclusion. Indeed, it has become increasingly critical for interlocutors within Roma civil society to engage with such EU-level policy resolutions, to chalk out concrete deliverables, and to push for their implementation.

Preserving the heterogeneity of the Roma Movement

In terms of giving support, the newly-envisioned Roma Foundation needs to be a facilitator and not a controller within civil society – and moreover, the fostering of autonomy, heterogeneity, and transparency in the Roma movement is key. What must be avoided at all costs is the Roma Foundation becoming a centralizing force with an “empire-building” mindset. The plurality of Roma civil society is essential to avoid elitism and donor dependence. Reflecting concerns about cronyism and the patronage of a Roma elite, the Roma Foundation will need to be governed by a board with high levels of expertise and should not be limited to Open Society Foundation/RIO insiders, but should include independent individuals who are capable of thinking and acting autonomously and holding the Foundation to account so that it may achieve its ultimate mission of strengthening an autonomous Roma civil society.

Other major transnational positions related to the Roma, such as the dedicated posts within the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) are time-limited, and, as is common with such posts, this is in part to prevent office holders from becoming too dominant and accumulating too much personal power. Although not an institutional power in the sense of the OSCE posts specific to Romani issues, the lead position in the Roma Foundation should be similarly time-limited.

We have seen the limits of the “trickle-down” elite Roma project over the past few decades within civil society. A shift in paradigm should be embraced so that empowerment is strengthened at the local level within Roma communities. This would not just be a fitting conclusion to the legacy of George Soros within Roma civil society, but would also lead to the achievement of the vision that Nicolae Gheorghe imagined for the Roma in their quest for social justice.