The European Union has awarded Bulgaria more than 1.5 million euros to the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior (Institute of Psychology) to conduct 20 trainings for 480 police officers on how to recognize "signs of radicalization" among Roma!
As we talk about including the fight against anti-Roma sentiment in the EU, EP President Von der Leyen talks about creating a "truly anti-racist" EU as the German government tries to counter growing radicalization within its army and police force (29 police officers in North Rhine-Westphalia suspended four days ago for exchanging pictures of Hitler and fake photos of refugees in gas chambers), the Bulgarian government turns its attention to a completely different direction: it wants money from the EU to fight against the "radicalization" of the Roma!?!
The money comes from the Operational Program for Good Governance and the European Social Fund, and the project is interesting for corruption - the name of the project is "Expansion of the expert capacity of the Ministry of Interior to prevent aggressive events in society, corruption and radicalization."
This is a European scandal and calls for urgent action by all Roma and pro-Roma activists, politicians and NGO representatives at EU and national level in Bulgaria because it is extremely dangerous to allow Roma to be labeled "radicalized". minority in an EU member state. You can probably imagine what would happen if another minority (Jewish, Turkish, Bulgarian or Hungarian) was the target of such an EU-funded project.
It is not at all clear how the Bulgarian authorities managed to justify the need for such training for European donors. Here is the information from the official website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior.