Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area recommended that Greece “take measures towards providing for all the Roma, including itinerant and non-Greek Roma, adequate and affordable housing with legal security of tenure, access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, electricity and other essential services, and meeting their specific cultural needs”. The CESCR also recommended that Roma representatives are included in the assessment of the IAP and requested information “on the practical effects of the implementation of the Plan, as well as its applicability to non-Greek Roma legally residing within the State party' s territory”. 49 IAP, noting the authorities’ attempt to reform it in order to ensure more effective coordination between the partners involved, as well as to the Sanitary Regulation, noting that both its original version adopted in 1983 and its amendment of 2003, resulted in the Roma having “an insufficient supply of appropriate camping sites” (§ 46). In June 2005, the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) found, in a landmark decision on a collective complaint (ERRC v. Greece), that the Greek policies with respect to housing and accommodation of Roma violated Article 16 of the European Social Charter. 98 The ECSR had found that the numbers of dwellings of an acceptable quality to meet the needs of settled Roma, and of stopping places for Roma who choose to follow an itinerant lifestyle or who are forced to do so, were insufficient, and that there was evidence of systematic forced eviction of Roma from sites or dwellings occupied by them. The Committee of Ministers, which adopted the decision, found “that Greece has failed to take sufficient measures to improve the living conditions of the Roma and that the measures taken have not yet achieved what is required by the Charter, notably by reason of the insufficient means for constraining local authorities or sanctioning them… [and] that a significant number of Roma are living in conditions that fail to meet minimum standards and therefore the situation is in breach of the obligation to promote the right of families to adequate housing laid down in Article 16 [of the European Social Charter]” (ResChS(2005)11: § 42). The Committee of Ministers also made specific reference to the The data presented in this chapter focuses on the concerns raised by the organization about forced evictions of Roma groups from two locations near Athens and Patras in 2004 and 2005. The forced evictions appear to have been associated with the country’s preparations for hosting the Summer Olympic Games of 2004 – both locations were Olympic sites and the eviction in the Athens area had taken place prior to the building of Olympic structures on the site. 99 Patras has also been chosen as the cultural capital of Europe for 2006 and urban planning to prepare the city for hosting events around this theme has been underway since 2001. In order to investigate reports received about the forced evictions of Roma from sites in Athens and Patras, Amnesty International’s delegation visited a number of settlements in January 2005. The delegation visited the settlements of Makriyianni and Riganokampos in the area of Patras in southern Greece and the settlements in the areas of Agia Paraskevi, Maroussi, and Aspropyrgos near Athens. In this report, data collected during this research is presented, which focuses on documenting the authorities’ practices of forced eviction and the failure to protect the right to adequate housing of the Roma living in Greece. Subsequent to concerns raised about the cases outlined here, the organization has received information of further eviction orders having been served to Romani inhabitants of the Athens area of Votanikos, which has been proposed as the site for building a new stadium for the Athens football team Panathinaikos, and which will also be the central site in a bid 98 99 ECSR, Collective Complaint number 15/2003, ERRC v. Greece, decision adopte by the Committee of Ministers on 8 June 2005, ResChS(2005)11. Amnesty International 5 October 2005 Amnesty International report, Greece: Preparing for the Olympic Games: Evicting the Roma (AI Index: EUR 25/004/2004). AI Index: EUR 25/016/2005