4.

Calls on the Commission to: (a) adopt priority areas for the Strategy, above all: — fundamental rights, in particular non-discrimination, equality and free movement, — education, vocational and lifelong training, — culture, — employment, — housing, including a healthy environment and adequate infrastructure, — healthcare, and improving the health situation of Roma, and — political and civil participation of Roma civil society, including young Roma; (b) present in the Strategy a roadmap for introducing binding minimum standards at EU level for the priority areas of education, employment, housing and healthcare; (c) define the objectives of the Strategy linked to the priority areas, above all by: — adopting and strengthening effective anti-discrimination legislation and measures to protect against discrimination in all fields of life, including multiple discrimination, and to guarantee, protect and promote fundamental rights, equality and non-discrimination and the right to free movement, including awareness-raising actions targeting Roma and non-Roma, in order to eradicate discriminatory obstacles, — combating anti-Gypsyism, prejudices, stereotypes, racism and xenophobia, stigmatisation and hate speech against Roma, notably by ensuring full implementation of relevant legislation and imposing appropriate punishment for racially-motivated crimes, — ensuring that the media do not disseminate prejudice against the Roma community and that they promote a positive image of diversity, as well as allowing a more proportionate participation of Roma in the media, — preventing human rights abuses and protecting victims, ensuring that legal aid and effective legal remedies are provided for them, with particular attention to the situation of Roma children and women, who are often subject to multiple discrimination, — introducing preventive measures against trafficking in human beings, victims of which are over-represented among the Roma, — training of persons involved at all levels of administration, justice and police services on non-discriminatory practices, — setting up dialogue between local authorities, judicial bodies, police and the Roma community in order to abolish discrimination in the judicial sphere, improve confidence and combat ethnic profiling, — ensuring equal access to quality education for all, — providing equal access to adult vocational training and access to lifelong learning, — ensuring equal access to social services and basic care infrastructure, such as child care and care of the elderly, — abolishing school and classroom segregation, also by creating an inclusive school climate and employing Roma school mediators, — providing equal access to adequate preparation for competitiveness in the job market, — providing equal access to early childhood education, — ensuring the education of girls, — providing intercultural education, — facilitating dialogue between families and schools, particularly through mediators, — increasing the number of Roma teachers and ensuring the protection of the language and identity of Roma children by making education available in their own language, — introducing measures to prevent early school-leaving and academic failure, — introducing measures to send children who have dropped out of the school system back to school, such as by the creation of second-chance programmes, — providing equal access to quality secondary and higher education and scholarship programmes, — combating the over-representation of Roma in special schools, — combating child poverty, reducing children’s separation from their families and preventing their placement in foster homes and special care as a result of poverty, — ensuring effective access to the labour market and developing and making available micro-credit for entrepreneurship and self-employment, — ensuring equal access to affordable and healthy housing and abolishing territorial segregation, — guaranteeing the right to a registered address, including the possibility of registering through a civil society organisation, and guaranteeing a complete and up-to-date register of births, marriages and deaths for all Roma citizens, as well as combating discrimination in the issuing of administrative documents, — combating health inequalities by providing equal access to quality health care and health promotion, particularly in order to reduce health inequalities with special emphasis on the protection of vulnerable groups including women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities, — empowering Roma civil society, including by means of a capacity-building policy and by strengthening administrative capacity at national, regional and local level as well as encouraging the civil and political participation of Roma people, — enhancing active citizenship, involving Roma in all spheres of public and political life and strengthening their representation in institutions and elected bodies at local, national and EU level, — introducing an enlargement and neighbourhood dimension of the Strategy, requiring the improvement of the situation of Roma in the acceding and candidate countries as well as potential candidates and those countries involved in the European Neighbourhood Policy; furthermore, prioritising the evaluation of progress in this field in the Annual Progress Reports as well as reviews of EU Neighbour Countries, — ensuring respect for culture and cultural preservation, — ensuring gender equality mainstreaming by addressing the specific needs of Roma women while involving them in the development of policies; stopping the practice of child marriages, — stopping returns of Roma to countries where they might be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;