Serbia has done a lot on the improvement of the position of Roma, and 2012 needs to be the year in which social integration of the Roma people will be an imperative, it was stated Sunday at a meeting held in the Serbian parliament building on the occasion of the International Roma Day.

National Coordinator of the Decade of Roma Inclusion Bozidar Djelic underlined at the meeting that in spite of the progress, Serbia needs to close down shanty towns, which house a large number of Roma, and provide them with new accommodation.

Djelic said that Serbia has allocated EUR 15 million from the EU pre-accession funds for this and the next year, which will be used for solution of the Roma problems, adding that the city of Belgrade has asked for EUR 67 million from the European Investment Bank to build 200 apartments for the Roma people.

Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Minority Rights Milan Markovic underlined that the state is particularly proud of its minority self-government system, but added that 2012 needs to be the year when Roma's position in the society will be resolved.

Through the systems of the minority self-government that is the national minority councils, the government has allocated RSD 230 million for the Roma community, the minister said adding that donations also came from the local self-governments and the budget of the autonomous province.

Noting that Serbia has adopted the Strategy for Improvement of the Status of Roma, Markovic underlined it has enabled improvement of the legal framework and easier acquisition of documents, including the fact that the Roma, who have no address, can now take out IDs.

The National Minority Council has noticed an improvement in the position of the Roma national minority, stressing that much more needs to be done in order to secure the community's full integration into the society.

President of the Roma National Minority Council Vitomir Mihajlovic said that the local self-governments have coordinators for the Roma issue and medical mediators, but that their systematization has not been done yet, as well as that there are 182 pedagogical workers, but that 1600 more are needed.

The International Roma Day is marked by a number of manifestations in order to shed light on the difficult position of the Roma people, and the meeting in the Serbian parliament was followed by a cultural program in the National Theatre.