European Commission calls for removal of anti-Roma wall in this year's European Capital of Culture

On 19 August the European Commission called for the "immediate" removal of a concrete wall erected in the Slovak town of Košice to separate local Romani residents from the rest of the town. Agence France-Presse reports that the Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, Sport, Media and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou, said the wall is incompatible with the values on which the European Union is based.

"I firmly believe the construction of such physical barriers contravenes the values on which our European Union is based, in particular, respect for human dignity and human rights, including the rights of minorities," the Commissioner wrote in a letter to the Chief Magistrate of Košice, Richard Rašim. The content of the letter was publicized in Brussels.

"The authorities in Košice must tear down that wall immediately," Vassiliou said. The Commissioner also added that the anti-Roma wall and its segregation of part of the population "contravenes the spirit of the designation of European Capital of Culture" which Košice was awarded for 2013.

The Chief Magistrate has admitted that the wall was erected "illegally" and is the work of the former mayor of the municipal department where it was built. The wall separates the Západ housing estate in Košice from the Romani ghettos in the Luník VIII and Luník IX neighborhoods.

News server romovia.sme.sk reports that this particular wall is the eighth such construction to have been erected since 2009 and the 14th in the country as a whole. According to the 2011 census, there are roughly 5.4 million people in Slovakia, 106 000 of whom are Romani, but Arne Mann, an ethnologist at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, claims an estimated 350 000 Romani people actually live there.