Despite the pressure and protests from both within and outside Italy, yesterday the latter country's authorities started the census in the Roma camps in Rome. Romania's interior minister Cristian David went to Italy yesterday and he attended a seminar organized by the Sant' Egidio community and meant to analyze the relations between the two states. The Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni, author of the much controversial law draft on the fight against immigration, cancelled his attendance. Naples and Milan were the first cities where the Roma camps had been subject to census and yesterday Rome came next. According to the Ansa Agency, the Red Cross employees went to the illegal camps in the company of policemen in order to collect data on the marital status and the state of health of the camp inhabitants and they also took pictures of them for future identity cards. The Berlusconi Cabinet's initiative, which includes the fingerprinting of the Roma and the making of an ethnic and religious record for every Roma in Italy has caused the latter state to split in sides, which is why Europe is seized with a hot dispute. The Parliament of Europe demanded last week that this initiative be dropped. Yesterday minister Maroni said he could no longer make it to the seminar because some unexpected "parliamentary problems" emerged. He just sent a message expressing appreciation for the Italian-Romanian cooperation in terms of security. When talking about his meeting with the Romanian President on the fingerprinting of the Roma, the Italian official had told in an interview to La Repubblica that he had asked Romania too for directions and that such recommendations would be taken into account. He had argued as follows: "We want to grant the underage with these rights, no matter such offensive and false polemics." As for what the Romanian PM had mentioned about having demanding Italian authorities to do the finger printing of the Romanians in a non-discriminating manner, minister Maroni had described this information as lacking any grounds. Andrea Ronchi, Italy;s minister of European policies, shared the opinion. The Romanian PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu has several times expressed criticism about the idea to fingerprint the nomads. He has expressed his message through Daniele Mancini, Italy's ambassador to Bucharest. Minister Rochi explained that the fingerprinting of the Italian citizens to be up in 2010 was "a means with a strongly symbolical dimension that settles the polemics of the latest weeks for good." Italian foreign minister replied to Romanian foreign minister According to the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini replied to the letter he had received from Lazar Comanescu, Romania's foreign minister by mentioning that the Italian government's intention was to tae action" in keeping with community law, both in terms of the fight against discrimination and also in terms of protection of personal data." Minister Frattini mentioned as well that the aim was not to categorize citizens or build a database, arguing that the idea was to achieve a census of the residents in the nomad camps in Italy, including Italians and non-EU citizens as well, people having no papers to prove their identity.

Luciana POP