Data released by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in its Roma Survey 2024 put a number to what many already knew: one in three Roma across the surveyed EU countries reported facing discrimination within the past year.

In the Czech Republic, the figure is worse.

The discrimination cuts across daily life — job applications rejected, barriers in healthcare, unequal treatment on public transport, exclusion from private services and educational opportunities.

The survey documents a pattern that advocates have described for years but that mainstream policy has been slow to address.

The findings came into fresh focus around International Roma Day on April 8, when President Petr Pavel received around twenty Roma community leaders at Prague Castle. Pavel estimated that roughly 250,000 Roma currently live in the Czech Republic, a number he framed as a reason — not an excuse — for urgency.

Full integration of this community, he said, is a condition for building a genuinely tolerant and functional society.

What Czechs Think — and Where They’re Wrong

Public opinion data adds another layer to the picture. A survey by the Public Opinion Research Center conducted last August found that more than half of Czech respondents believe Roma face fewer employment opportunities than the majority population. Over two-fifths said Roma are disadvantaged in public and civic life. Thirty-seven percent pointed to housing, and 35 percent to access to qualifications.

Yet roughly a third of respondents went in the opposite direction, saying Roma housing conditions are not worse than average — and may actually be better.

That perception conflicts sharply with documented living standards in many Roma settlements across the country, where overcrowding and substandard infrastructure remain common.

The Media Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

The gap between perception and reality does not form in a vacuum. Screenwriter and director Robert Poupatko, whose work examines how minorities are portrayed in Czech culture, has identified three recurring archetypes that dominate media coverage of Roma: the caricature, the victim, and the perpetrator.

None of these images, Poupatko argues, reflects the actual diversity of the community. All three flatten complexity and give audiences a ready-made narrative that requires no further thought.

The cost is carried by Roma themselves: when positive representations are absent from public life, young Roma grow up without figures to identify with or aspire to.

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