Petition 1120/2009 on Romania’s fulfilment of international conventions on children’s rights

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Date: 01-04-10

Petition 1120/2009 on Romania’s fulfilment of international conventions on children’s rights

The Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament met the 22-23 of March 2010 to discuss and act on the request submitted by Amici dei Bambini through the petition No. 1120/2009 to take all measures necessary to ensure that the Romanian authorities recognise intercountry adoption as a legitimate and necessary way of finding families for abandoned children who could no be adopted in Romania.

The first petitioner, the President of Amici dei Bambini Marco Griffini, explained in his speech the reasons behind the petition and his disappointment for the lack of action of the Romanian Government for coping with the worrying conditions of Romanian abandoned children, whose number cannot be “absorbed” by the national adoption.

One of the solutions proposed by Marco Griffini consists of considering a gradual re-opening of intercountry adoptions at least for certain categories of children who, because of their age, health condition or ethnic origins will difficulty be adopted in Romania (“special needs”).

Romanian MEPs member of the Committee (Adina Iolani Vãlean, Elena Basescu and Victor Bo?tinaru) reacted excluding unanimously the withdrawal of the moratorium blocking international adoption and urging the ineffectiveness of the European Commission as well as the European Parliament to deal with this issue.

The Chairwoman of the Committee on Petitions, Erminia Mazzoni, and the Italian MEP Patrizia Toia led the debate to more constructive channels and mutual understanding, stressing that the focus should be the interest of all to protect children and their right to have a family in Romania as well as in all other European Union Countries.

Thereby the Committee succeeds in reaching an agreement: it rejected formally the petition, but it underlined the importance and the positive aim of this initiative.

In the next future the Committee decided to schedule on the agenda of political group of coordinators the issue of protection of children without parental care recognising the emergency as well as the need to address it at European level.

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