European Committee Rules Bulgaria Is Violating the Right to Health Care for Roma People

STRASBOURG, France—In a ruling released today, the European Committee of Social Rights found that Bulgaria is in violation of the European Social Charter by failing to meet its obligations to ensure that Roma have adequate access to health care. The ruling was issued in response to a collective complaint filed by the European Roma Rights Centre with support from the Open Society Institute.

In its decision, the committee found that “significant cases of discriminatory practices against Roma in provision of medical services … taken together with all other evidence submitted by the complainant serve to reinforce the committee’s overall conclusion that Roma in Bulgaria do not benefit from appropriate responses to their general and specific health care needs.”

Specifically, the committee found the following violations:

• lack of sufficient health care for vulnerable and socially excluded persons such as Roma as a result of government policies restricting medical insurance and social assistance;
• lack of systematic, long term government measures to promote health awareness among Roma;
• failure of the Bulgarian government to take positive measures to reasonably address the specific problems experienced by Roma in accessing health care such as social exclusion, marginalization, and the environmentally hazardous conditions in which Roma live.  

In its conclusion, the committee ruled that Bulgaria’s policy and practice with regard to medical and social assistance to Roma violated Article 11 (right to protection of health) in conjunction with Article E (nondiscrimination) and Article 13(1) (right to social and medical assistance) of the Revised European Social Charter.

The Bulgarian government must report on this issue to the committee until the problems at issue in the decision are resolved.

Krassimir Kanev, chair of the the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, which cooperated closely in the preparation of the complaint, said: “The decision of the committee registered a double failure of successive Bulgarian governments: they failed to establish a system of health care that addresses the needs of the most vulnerable parts of the Bulgarian population and they failed to protect one of Bulgaria’s largest ethnic minorities from discrimination in the exercise of one of the most important human rights.”

Robert Kushen, managing director of the European Roma Rights Centre, stated, “This is a landmark ruling: the first time the European Committee of Social Rights has found a violation of the Charter due to the failure of the state to provide adequate access to health care for its citizens. The fact that this decision concerns the Roma minority is no accident. In Bulgaria, as throughout Europe, the Roma population is deprived of many basic rights that the majority population takes for granted. With the economic crisis, it is more important than ever that these important rights such as equal access to health care are protected for the majority and minorities alike.”

The full text of the European Committee of Social Rights decision in Collective Complaint 46/2007, European Roma Rights Centre v. Bulgaria, is available on the ERRC website.