Roma in Bulgaria - Overview

Overview

In Bulgaria, the Roma are most commonly referred to as Tsigani (цигани, pronounced ), an exonym that some Roma resent and others embrace. The form of the endonym Roma in Bulgarian is romi (роми).

Bulgaria participates in the Decade of Roma Inclusion, an international initiative to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of Roma, with eight other governments committing themselves to "work toward eliminating discrimination and closing the unacceptable gaps between Roma and the rest of society". The rights of the Roma people in the country are also represented by various political parties and cultural organizations, most notably the Civil Union "Roma".

Noted Roma from Bulgaria include musicians Azis, Sofi Marinova and Ivo Papazov, surgeon Aleksandar Chirkov, politicians Toma Tomov and Tsvetelin Kanchev, footballer Marian Ognyanov, and 1988 Olympic boxing champion Ismail Mustafov.

Romani people are considered second-class citizens by some Bulgarians and approximately 70,000 of them are engaged in criminal activities. Trafficking among Romani people is also widespread due to their bride market traditions. Roma integration programmes funded by the European Union have so far been unsuccessful. Many of them are engaged in stealing of metal components from the national infrastructure which are then sold as scrap metal for money. The theft of metal components is a primary source of revenue for some 60,000 Roma. There are also numerous reported cases of Roma attacks against passenger and cargo trains.