In order to help the guiding of national Roma policies and mobilise funds available at EU level to support inclusion efforts, the European Commission presented on 5 April 2011 the European Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies. According to this Framework, which focuses in access to education, jobs, healthcare and housing, Member States should set individual national Roma integration goals in proportion to the population on their territory and depending on their starting point.

The European Union has stressed in several occasions the need for better integration of Roma people, as it was the particularly the case when the European Commission presented its view on how EU funds can help to achieve this objective and portraying the progress made regarding Roma integration. This needs which are at the core of the relationship between the European Union and Roma, are based on the Race Equality Directive, which already obliges Member States to give equal access to ethnic minorities, such as the Roma, to education, housing, health and employment.

In December 2010, the Commission's Roma Task Force found that strong and proportionate measures are still not in place to tackle the social and economic problems of a large part of the EU's Roma population, being therefore crucial to step up a gear and ensure that national, regional and local integration policies focus on Roma in a clear and specific way.

Main targets set by the European Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies

• Education: ensuring that all Roma children complete at least primary school
• Employment: cutting the employment gap between Roma and other citizens
• Health: reducing the health gap, for example by cutting child mortality among Roma
• Housing: closing the gap in access to housing and public utilities such as water and electricity

Within this Framework Member States will have to submit national Roma strategies by the end of 2011, specifying how they will contribute to the achievement of these goals. Given that the Framework is in line with the EU's broader Europe 2020 targets for employment, social inclusion and education, the achievement its particular goals is quite important to help Member States reach the overall targets of the Europe 2020 strategy.

The Commission is also proposing solutions to make sure that EU funds that can support Roma integration are more effectively used and invited Member States to amend their operational programmes co-financed by Structural Funds and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development to better support Roma targeted projects.

Finally, the Commission wants to put a robust monitoring mechanism in place to measure the results in application on national programmes. The EU's Fundamental Rights Agency will have a key role to play, by collecting data on the social and economic situation of Roma, in cooperation with other organisations as well as national contact points appointed by Member States.