“Watch out for the csigányok. They’re all scum," warned my brand new neighbour as I was carrying our belongings into our new home in Budapest. “Welcome to Hungary!” I thought. “Looks like I have a racist for a neighbour.” But did I?

The year was 2001 and I had just started my new job as correspondent for Eastern Europe. When taking over from my predecessor, he had handed me a box full of books about the Roma. “Good luck!” he said. “If you’re stuck for a news item in the years to come, you can always rely on the gypsies. They go down well with the newspapers.”

He wasn’t wrong. After eight years on the job, I had over 100 Roma-related items to my name: news, background stories and reports from the far flung corners of Albania to the ghettos of Bucharest and Prague. There was no end to it. For we like to pity the Roma and that makes them hot news.

Gypsies and peasants
The media in Eastern Europe and the Balkans see the Roma as anything but pitiable. They refer to them as gypsies. For their part, Hungarian Roma call other Hungarians parasztok or peasants. It’s a term of derision that tends to be accompanied by spitting on the ground.

It’s not a situation that holds out much hope of integration. Yet the West is investing billions in this very same cause. There are a host of Roma integration agencies in cities such as Prague and Budapest. “They’re all full of well-meaning pen-pushers who haven’t a clue what they’re talking about,” social worker Géza told me.

Keep your mouth shut
Géza knew the Roma from first-hand experience . He was “adopted” as a kind of uncle by an influential Roma family. He was even invited to a christening party for the latest addition to the family. When he got back home, he found that his house had been stripped: cutlery gone, electrical equipment gone, everything gone. As Géza put it, the thieves knew where they needed to be that day.

One month later, that same Roma family invited him to Christmas dinner. Géza ate that evening with his own cutlery. In one corner of the room stood his stolen television, in the other corner his stereo. “At a moment like that it’s better to keep your mouth firmly shut,” says Géza. But he had nothing more to do with the family ever again.

Brute
Most Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs and Bulgarians have written off the Roma. We’ve seen it all before. Everything’s been tried, they say despairingly. The Roma feel excluded by the “peasants” and withdraw like clams into their closed community.

And between these two camps, there’s another: the camp of moral indignation. Listen to the concerned members of the European Parliament condemning French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a tyrant and a bully for throwing Roma out of the country.

Who’s right?
There are reasons enough for saying the “peasants” are right, since all the help offered to the Roma has largely been frittered away by the Roma themselves. But the Roma too are right to be angry at all being tarred with the same brush by the “peasants”.

In any case, one camp has got it very wrong indeed, and that’s the aid industry. They are facilitating false indignation and pumping vast amounts of money (13 billion in EU funds over a period of six years) into projects that are lost on the recipients with and which only exacerbate the envy in those parts of society that are missing out on such financial support.

Towards the end of my stint as a correspondent, I encountered the 'Gábor' in Romania, a prosperous Roma community thanks to their expertise in the making of tin roofs. They were striking figures: proudly parading through the streets, cowboy hat on head and belly firmly to the fore. From my vantage point on the terrace of a local bar, I saw how a Roma youth tried to break into a Mercedes belonging to one of the Gábors. The owner was just in time to prevent the crime and give the would-be car thief a slap in the face. As the lad scampered off, the Gábor called out after him “You filthy little gypsy!”