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09/20/2008: "Italy must face legal action for anti-Gypsy measures, says Soros"

Billionaire philanthropist and financier George Soros has said at a top-level EU conference on the problems facing Roma people in Europe that he supports legal action against Italy over recent anti-Gypsy measures, particularly the fingerprinting of adults and children.

"Certainly, fingerprinting, racial profiling and so on is unacceptable and, I believe, illegal, and I hope that the European Court of Justice will take up the case and declare it illegal," the Hungarian-born founder of the Open Society Institute said on Tuesday (16 September) in a press conference at the first "European Roma Summit" in Brussels, an event jointly organised by the European Commission and the Soros foundation.

"I am worried that this could become a de facto European standard," Mr Soros added.

Earlier this year, Mr Berlusconi's government declared a national state of emergency in response to a rise in crime blamed mainly on Romanian immigrants and announced that authorities would begin fingerprinting the Roma population.

[ Soros should face legal action for his anti-Italian measures. I wonder if he complains about how his fellow Jews in Israel treat Arabs? ]

http://euobserver.com/843/26750