During the Spring 2020 semester, students taking Social Policy and Politics in the EU course worked in groups to  socially-oriented campaigns. In their presentations and campaign descriptions they were to outline the rationale for your campaign; measures / actions that the campaign will involve; its target audience as well as its projected outcomes. On the Module’s website, we will present several of their ideas in the form of separate posts.

Campaign in Support of Roma Communities amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Zdravko Cherkezov, Milka Stoycheva and Sofija Gajic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining moment in European history. For Roma communities, it is a life-or-death moment. There are 12 million Roma dispersed all around Europe, and most of them live in shanty towns with no access to water, electricity, or sanitation: a recipe for disaster during a COVID-19 pandemic. In Bulgaria, the home of 750 000 Roma people, misery and starvation loom as large as the threat of the invisible virus. With 86% at-risk poverty rate, and 55% pre-crisis unemployment rate among Bulgarian Roma, a socioeconomic crisis was always going to hit Roma people the hardest, but the COVID-19 crisis is the worst possible scenario. Since the Roma people have mainly been active in the informal sector, they are completely excluded from these emerging corona-response related social protection measures. Without an income or social support, thousands are left without the means by which to purchase food. It is paramount that we act to change that.

In response to these challenges, we have created a campaign whose main goal is to create opportunities for informed dialogue between government officials and the Bulgairian civil society. We will work to help NGOs voice their demands and influence the national strategy with regards to the treatment of Roma people amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. 

By means of open letters, petitions, and organized discussion panels between stakeholders we will put forward a number of proposals for the better treatment of the Roma community. Among the main propositions are the permanent removal of the walls around all Roma neighborhoods, the establishment of facilities for clean running water, the mobilization of a bigger number of health mediators for the purpose of informing the Roma communities about the disease, as well as the provision of social safety net for the Roma, who have lost all sources of income due to the crisis. We will also use traditional and non-traditional media channels to raise awareness among the Bulgarian citizens about the campaign. 

The whole European community has a great interest in improving the treatment of the Roma in the current crisis. We urge fellow Member States, such as Romania and Slovakia, to join our campaign. The Roma deserve to live better lives, and with urgent action now, we hope to deliver such promise. Who knows, maybe after the crisis Europe will emerge with an EU-wide Roma Strategy.

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On 7 April, we held a class on cross-border assistance offered to transnationally mobile  workers in countries in which they perform their work. In this context, we hosted a guest speaker – Mr Szabolcs Sepsi from the Fair Mobility Initiative. The Fair Mobility initiative is a project run by the German state and DGB, the country’s biggest trade union confederation, which aims to support mobile workers from CEE who fell victim of exploitation while working in Germany. It also raises awareness of the German labour law among foreign employees, promoting legal employment and fair working conditions.

The talk was extremely interesting, especially its part related to the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on working conditions of transnationally mobile workers in Germany. According to Mr Sepsi, two types of impacts are discernible. First, many workers are unlawfully dismissed ‘from one day to the other’. Such employees are in acute need of assistance since when they get fired they lose not only their source of income, but often also accommodation, as the latter tends to be provided by the employer. Second, those who remain employed oftentimes are forced to work additional hours in order to meet the growing demand for certain products. The latter development is typical for the meat industry, which was notorious for the bad working conditions already before the coronavirus outbreak. Also this group of workers requires FM’s team assistance in enforcing their labour rights.

Another interesting aspect of Mr Sepsi’s intervention ere the effects of the current lockdown on the bargaining power of German seasonal workers in the agriculture industry. The fact that fewer workers are available this year work should in principle put seasonal workers in a favourable position and allow it to demand higher wages and working conditions. In many cases, however, restrictions on spatial mobility imposed as part of the anti-COVID 19 measures do not allow them to leave their workplaces and use the threat of changing employers as a bargaining tool.

All in all, the talk highlighted the crucial importance of transnationally mobile CEE workers for Western European economies. At the same time, it also revealed that the hard work performed by them is not always adequately valued.

Within the amework of our ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’ course, students prepared Policy Memos outlining policy measures that could be implemented within the framework of the Youth Guarantee scheme to combat youth unemployment in their countries or an EU Member State of their choice.

Many interesting initiatives have been proposed. For instance, one of the students sought to tackle the high rates of youth unemployment rates and emigration of young people from Latvia’s economically least developed regions. She accordingly suggested a subsidy system that would support the transfer of companies’ production facilities to these localities, combined with a training program for the local youth designed to match their qualifications with the employers’ needs.

Addressing a similar problem in a Bulgarian context, another person suggested the creation of local expert boards matching business and education institutions located in the country’s non-capital regions. The aim of the initiative was to ensure that curricula at higher education institutions – and skills gained by the young people, respectively – meet local labour market needs.

Yet another policy scheme aimed at tackling the shortage of Bulgaria’s healthcare personnel, in particular nurses. The proposal envisaged the organization of promotional campaign and information sessions designed to encourage secondary school students to take up the profession.

What were the lessons taken from the policy memo? Two points are of particular relevance here. First, early all proposals highlighted the necessity of involving a wide range of stakeholders, especially employers and their organizations. Second, the majority sought to combat youth unemployment while simultaneously promoting a more balanced development and reducing inequality between different regions, ethnic and social groups. Such a comprehensive approach to the underlining causes of youth unemployment is well taken, especially in view of high level of income inequality and regional disparity in the students’ countries of origin.

Within the framework of the Jean Monnet Module ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’, a course on EU social policy is taught at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) for the three consecutive years, starting in the Spring 2020 semester.