Italian ForMin: "We shall respect the European Community laws in both the fight against discrimination and in the protection of personal data"

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is once again exchanging letters with the Romanian officials, this time not as an European Commissioner worried about the future of the Romanian Integrity Agency, but as member of a government which demanded the recording of all fingerprints of Roma immigrants in Italy, including children. In a letter addressed to his Romanian homologue, Frattini ensures Romanian authorities of the fact that Italy will act in accordance with the European laws against discrimination. „We don’t want to create a database or to put up a catalogue, we just want a census of all the individuals in those camps, where both European and non-European people live, often without any legal papers”, Frattini explained.

Romanian media, NGOs and authorities, as well as international organizations like UNICEF and the United Nations asked the Berlusconi government to quit this discriminatory initiative, which comes against the human rights.