On 19th July 2017, the European Commission published the Public Consultation on the Evaluation of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies (NRIS) up to 2020, for the external evaluation of the EU NRIS, which ended on 25th October.
The importance of Roma Health has already recently highlighted in a joint statement of Roma, pro-Roma and Public Health NGOs. As a follow up, the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) pulled together an ad-hoc coalition of Roma and pro-Roma stakeholders, and engaged with Roma at local and community level. NGOs being part of this process collectively contributed to the public consultation from a Roma Health and Early Childhood Development perspective.
The coordinated input of all involved organisations were based on an explanatory analysis which was carried out to map the policy instruments and the commitments that they contain, and a scoping survey designed to facilitate evaluation how the rhetorical elements were actually implemented in practice, based on a structured interview process with 119 local and regional Roma and pro-Roma NGO representatives and Roma professionals working in the structures of local and regional public authorities, as well as 788 Roma community members from 4 EU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia ) and one enlargement country (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). The survey process was facilitated by current and former EPHA Roma Health and Early Childhood Development Fellows.