"This year marks the halfway point of Europe’s “Decade of Roma Inclusion”, launched in 2005 at a riverside hotel in Budapest. Five years on, say activists, most Roma are still worse off than under communism, which, for all its faults, at least guaranteed work, housing and welfare, and stamped down on hate crimes. Today conditions in Roma settlements on the edges of town and villages rival Africa or India for their deprivation." (Quoted from article)