Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area to host the 2012 European Football Championship. According to information received by August 2005, 70 Romani families were threatened with forced eviction in Votanikos in the absence of any offers of alternative accommodation. Romani residents of Votanikos area, Athens, threatened with eviction (above) and their dwellings (below). © GHM 3.4 Failure to honour relocation contracts In July 2004 Amnesty International expressed concern about the failure of local authorities in the area of Athens to honour an agreement they had signed with Roma residents, on the basis of which the latter had agreed to relocate. The organization had learnt that on 1 August 2002, as part of the ongoing preparations in the Athens suburb of Maroussi for the 2004 Olympic Games, the Mayor of Maroussi, and a representative of a group of 50 Romani families, some of whom had been living close to the site for over 30 years, signed an agreement which stipulated that the families would leave their homes on condition they would receive subsidies to help them rent new accommodation. This was to be a temporary measure, as, under the terms of the agreement, the Municipality of Maroussi also undertook to find a plot of land and relocate the Roma in heavy-duty prefabricated houses, while undertaking to work towards their permanent re-housing in houses / apartments.100 The main motive behind the agreement was the necessity to vacate the plot of land where the Roma had been living, in order for a road to be widened and for a parking lot for the adjacent Olympic stadium to be built. 100 It should also be noted that the agreement was not extended to encompass Albanian Roma legally residing in Greece, who some years ago proceeded to set up a settlement next to the one where the Greek Roma were living. Amnesty International 5 October 2005 50 The agreement, which affected a total of 137 people, guaranteed a monthly payment for each family with payments varying according to family size. Shortly afterwards the families moved into rented accommodation or into accommodation that other members of their wider family group had rented. However, there were reports that by October 2002 they had already begun making complaints that they were not receiving payments, or that the payments were erratic. Some families alleged that they faced discrimination whilst looking for new accommodation and when they did finally find a house to rent they would lose it through lack of funds, caused by the nonpunctual payment of the rent subsidies by the Maroussi Municipality. This prompted the Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM), the NGO overseeing developments in the case, to file a criminal complaint report with the Athens Misdemeanours Prosecutor’s Office who ordered the launch of two preliminary inquiries into the allegations. 101 Both Roma and GHM members have been called to testify. Despite this intervention, the families’ persistence, and the interventions of the Greek Ombudsman and of the former Deputy Minister of the Interior, the public authorities had, up to July 2004, failed to honour their commitments, and the competent authorities had failed to intervene, leaving some families unable to afford rent elsewhere. Amnesty International was concerned that the Greek authorities, by forcibly evicting Roma from their settlement and failing to facilitate their move to alternative appropriate accommodation, were violating Article 11 of the ICESCR, as well as the objectives of the IAP. An example of the effects of these failures on the daily lives of the Roma was provided by the story of Prokopis Nikolaou, one of the evictees, who brought his case to the attention of local organizations. He has two young sons 101 Amnesty International acknowledges GHM’s assistance in providing information relevant to the concerns raised in this section. AI Index: EUR 25/016/2005