Financiarul

MEP Daciana Sarbu thinks it necessary to direct European attention to the “increasingly worrying” situation of the Romanian community in Italy. A press release issued by the Social Democrat MEP, which was sent on Thursday, reads that “the whole Europe is already aware of they way people tried to blame a whole community because of a few law breakers.

With every passing day the Romanians face ever more serious problems, they are ever more intimidated and frightened.” Daciana Sarbu told the plenum of the European Parliament that “the Italian Government must clearly be asked to take the necessary measures for stopping the discrimination against the Romanians in this country” and supported her statements by giving several recent examples.

“It is the case of a Romanian citizen, who was injured in a work accident while working for an Italian company and was given a holiday without pay, and after he recovered, he was denied employment. He was not even dismissed and could not have the unemployment benefit. The Romanian citizen in question has to support a wife who does not find any employment and a young child. The Italian authorities did not understand him. He came to Brussels in despair, hoping that the European Parliament can help him.

I have assured him I shall do it,” said Daciana Sarbu. Another case of discrimination was, according to the Romanian MEP, the one referring to the manager of telephony, TV cable and Internet company in Italy, who recommended his employees to avoid signing contracts with Romanian citizens. “There is also the case of a Romanian-born Roma citizen, who was injured, but whom no hospital in the city of Messina wanted to accept.

The child died on the way to Catania,” said the Romanian MEP, who added that “these are only a few concrete situations, but the Romanians in Italy face such blows almost every day.”
“They are fully fledged European citizens and most of them obey the law, pay their taxes and contribute to the welfare of the Italian State. If there is something to be punished, it is the violation of the law that must be punished, not the nationality, and the only weapon we have to use against the offence is the law,” concludes Daciana Sarbu.