"Romani people are deported without legal reason"

Sweden deports Romani people without proper legal reason. This claims former Liberal People’s Party (Sw: Folkpartiet) chairman Maria Leissner, now chairman for the government’s committee on Romani issues.

So far this year, fifty Romani people have been deported because they were begging for money in the metro and other public places reports the Swedish radio. Begging is however not illegal in Sweden and many of them are EU-citizens and thus have the right to remain in another country in the union for three months anyway. The Stockholm police claim however that they are following the Swedish law when they deport foreign citizens who can not support themselves



Minister for Migration Tobias Billström says to the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) that Romani people needs to support themselves in a reasonable way in order to stay. Begging in the metro is not such a proper way he claims. Billström says that every member state has to solve its minority problems in a way that improves the rights for the minorities
We can not solve Romania’s, Bulgaria’s or some other Eastern European country’s problem with the exposure of their Romani population by them moving from one country to another. It is not because people should be able to travel around begging that we have created the free movement in the EU he said to DN


Nyamko Sabuni.
Minister for Integration and Gender Equality Nyamko Sabuni and Minister for European Affairs Birgitta Ohlsson has writen a letter to the European commission in order to stress all member states responsibility for the Romani population
There are so many prejudices about Romani people. They are the only group in society that one can express things about and discriminate against without any one reacting says Sabuni to DN.