Strange Bedfellows: The Council of Europe and the European Roma and Travellers Forum

Abstract

In 2004, the Council of Europe established, through an unprecedented
method, the European Roma and Travellers Forum as a consultative
assembly to represent Roma and similar groups on the pan-European level.
The body has a unique hybrid nature. It has been established as a non-governmental organisation, but it still functions as a body of the Council of
Europe, the intergovernmental organisation to which it is linked by contract
and by which it is financed. The article discusses in detail these
extraordinary developments. Taking as a starting point the multilevel
governance approach, it uses distinct explanatory models – the ideational
theory and republican liberalism at the international level and the
transnational advocacy networks approach at the infranational level – to
analyse these events.