After a months-long campaign, 11 mayors and mayors of Dolenj, Belokrajna and Posavina municipalities in Slovenia submitted proposals for changes to social legislation to the National Assembly. Throughout the collection of signatures, the mayors announced that the purpose of the changes was to protect the benefits of children from socially difficult backgrounds and to encourage interest in the integration of the unemployed into the labour market.

They of course kept silent the fact that the proposals target Roma, because otherwise the proposals would be rejected as unconstitutional, because they are discriminatory. But it is obvious that problems such as children’s non-enrolment in school are primarily associated with the Roma. The mayor of Novo Mesto, Gregor Macedoni, who is at the head of the initiative, told STA that their initiative deals in a general way with the problem of children who, being born in a “certain social environment”, are marked by the fact that they have no future, and there is a high probability that, that they will not finish primary school. According to his estimate, there are 1.5 percent of such children in Slovenia.

• Za romske otroke gre. In: Megafon. 02.09.2023. https://megafon.si/aktualno/za-romske-otroke-gre/