Politicians are the cause of this problem, and only politicians can solve it. We have found that lobbying Romanian politicians is a waste of time, they will only respond to external pressure form the EU or from the United States. Please ask the European Politicians to force the Romanian government to change its stance on human rights. Romania will be a member of the EU in 2007, and as we have seen previously in the case of Hungary and the Czech Republic, unless these issues are sorted out prior to accession, the suffering will go on and no form of censure will exist to force the government to change.
In April 2005, Romania cleared the last hurdle to EU accession when a vote in the European Parliament was passed by a large majority. No conditions were imposed on Romania with regards to this issue, despite prolonged lobbying by concerned human rights organisations. It is now too late to reverse this decision, but the matter comes up for review in November 2005.
It is imperative therefore that as many people as possible request that the Enlargement Commissioner reviews this decision in November and forces Romania to speed up the reform process. We want one million people to e-mail Commissioner Olli Rehn at olli.rehn@cec.eu.int . Please take the time to send the commissioner a brief e-mail as follows, or using any similar form of wording you think appropriate.
Dear Commissioner Rehn,
I am very concerned that Romania has been allowed to progress to a point where they will become full members of the EU in 2007, without any conditions being imposed on them regarding reform any of the terrible institutions catering for disabled and mentally ill adults all over Romania. A pilot project that points the way forward is already underway in the Constanta Region; all that is needed is to complete this project and roll it out nationally. If you were to impose targets with regards to this rollout, and make the achievement of these targets a condition of full accession, you would provide basic human rights to tens of thousands of people who have no voice and no spokespersons. On the other hand, if you refuse to do this, you condemn these victims to a continuing life of squalour and deprivation. Please do something about this problem ahead of the review of Romania's accession progress in November.
In addition to sending e-mails to Commissioner Rehn, it would be of assistance if you could also send e-mails to the members of the European Parliament delegation to Romania. This is a sub-group of MEPs that reports back to the parliament on conditions in Romania. Clearly, they have chosen in their reporting to ignore the issue of human rights, despite being briefed on this issue by human rights organisations. You can let them know that you are unhappy with their decision to sweep this issue under the carpet. Their e-mail addresses are as follows......