Coordination at national level

AuthorFavilli, Chiara
Pages67-67
67
9 COORDINATION AT NATIONAL LEVEL
The Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and the Department for Equal Opportunities
share respon sibility for coordinating equal treatment issues in the fields cov ered by the
directives.
A national anti-racism action plan was presented by the Ministry of Labour and Social
Policies du ring the meeting that the Government held on 7 August 2015. Several p ress
releases were made available regarding this presentation, bu t no further informati on has
been given about it subsequently. The official document of th e plan remains unavailable
on the UNAR website, a nd it is not on the Ministry of Labour website either. It could not
even be found in a search o f the Official Journal and legal databases. Up to the time o f
drafting this report, no official document has been avail able except for the press release
for the Government’s meeting at which the strategy was presented. Following a request
made directly to UNAR, copies of the plan and of the related decree were for warded to a
mailing list of mi gration lawyers. However, there is no official record of the plan. Even
more seriously, there is no record of its effective implementation. The restructuring of
UNAR (the change of director and the majority of its staff) may be one of the reasons for
the plan not bein g implemented and/or for information about it not being disseminated.
Another reason might be the absence in Government of any ministerial office with
responsibility for integra tion affairs whereas, t hanks to the previous existence of such an
arrangement, the national Roma strategy was adopted and the drafting of the Anti-
Racism Action Plan was begun. It seems that the Government lacks a minister who is
willing and able to act in the field of anti-racism, with the paradoxical situation that the
only relevant governmental office is UNAR, the equality body, which is supposed to be
independent.
There is a certain uneasiness in commenting on a document whose nature and legal
effects are so uncertai n, especially in the absence of any practical impact. Therefore, as
far as we are concerned, the plan has been formally adopted, yet without having any
effectiveness. This is equivalent to non-adoption, and during the years following its
adoption no significant step has b een taken to change this situa tion of inactivity. The
situation has not changed during 2018, despite the appointment of the new director.

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