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The striving of countries inCentralEurope to enter theEuropean Union may offer an unprecedented chance to the continent’s Gypsies (or Roman) to be recognized as a nation, albeit one without a defined territory.And if they were to achieve that they might even seek some kind of formal place—at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union’s present and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents of Gypsy rights go as high as 15m.

Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their language is related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be born on the moon. OtherEuropeans (wrongly) thought them migrantEgyptians, hence the derivative Gypsy. Most probably they were itinerant metal workers and entertainers who drifted west from India in the 7th century.
However, since communism inCentralEurope collapsed a decade ago, the notion of Romanestan as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained grounD、The International Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, is fostering the idea of "self-rallying". It is trying to promote a standard and written form of the language; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as the United Nations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, theCzech capital, where President Vaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.
At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer,Emil Scuka, was elected president of the International Tomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members of parliament, mayors and local councilors from all overEurope (OSCE、, to discuss how to persuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.
The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speak for Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at its congress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsies are perhaps the world’s best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councils there. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how it would actually be elected was left undecideD、
So far, theEuropeanCommission is wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as a nation. They might, it is feared, open a Pandora’s box already containingBasques,Corsicans and other awkward peoples.Besides, acknowledging Gypsies as a nation might backfire, just when several countries, particularly Hungary, Slovakia and theCzech Republic, are beginning to treat them better, in order to qualify forEU membership. "TheEU’s whole premise is to overcome differences, not to highlight them," says a nervousEurocrat.
But the idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition asEurope’s largest continent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on. Gypsies have suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has the largest number of them (more than 1m), in the 19th century they were actually enslaveD、Hitler tried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.
"Gypsies deserve some space withinEuropean structures," says Jan Marinus Wiersma, aDutchman in theEuropean Parliament who suggests that one of the current commissioners should be responsible for Gypsy affairs. Some prominent Gypsies say they should be more directly represented, perhaps with a quota in theEuropean Parliament. That, they argue, might give them a boost. There are moves afoot to help them to get money for, among other things, a Gypsy university.
One big snag is thatEurope’s Gypsies are, in fact, extremely heterogeneous. They belong to many different, and often antagonistic, clans and tribes, with no common language or religion, Thei