National governments fear that helping gypsies will cost them votes, according to the European Parliament's first gypsy member. She believes the parliament is the forum to solve their many problems, writes Susan Carroll.

Livia Jaroka is so busy that she's almost a blur. Since becoming the first Roma to serve in the European Parliament, her life has been beyond hectic - an endless round of meetings and media. In this 30-year-old Hungarian, the Roma have found a passionate champion.

Tiny, intense and strikingly pretty, she has an almost evangelical commitment to improving the lives of her people. But she never planned to do it in the grey corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Jaroka studied anthropology for years, earning a PhD in Roma issues from University College London. But she was hardly a political naif when centre-right party Fidesz approached her to appear on its list for the European elections last June. "My mission has always been to put the Roma on the agenda," she says in fluent English, "but I thought I would do this through the civil rights movement."

Disillusioned with the Hungarian government's unwillingness to change gypsies' lives, she saw potential in taking their cause to the European level.

"National governments are reluctant to help the Roma for fear of losing votes," she explains. "Anyway, this is not a national problem, it's a pan-European problem. There are 12 to 15 million Roma, making us the biggest minority in Europe."

The Roma live in terrible poverty across central and eastern Europe and in countries such as Greece, surviving in overcrowded slums and isolated rural communities. Some 2,000 Roma in Belgrade eke out an existence on a massive rubbish dump.

A 2003 World Bank report revealed that Roma in countries including Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia are sometimes 10 times poorer than the general population, and they die up to 15 years earlier than other citizens.

Gypsies also face virulent discrimination and racism. Recently, there was an outcry over an internet game in which players "ethnically cleansed" Hungary of its Roma population. Their reception in western Europe isn't much better; British newspapers have reported that a Roma person attempting to travel to Britain from Prague was 400 times more likely to be turned back than a non-Roma.

For Jaroka, education is key to changing this. Roma children have little chance of receiving a proper education, and many schools are segregated.

Only a third of Roma children go to secondary school in Hungary, according to the United Nations Development Programme, and many with no mental disabilities are put into "special schools".

Jaroka, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a gypsy father, escaped this fate because she grew up in Sopron, a town on the Austrian border with few Roma and a non-segregated school. But her family, descended from famous gypsy violinist and conductor Sandor Jaroka, still experienced discrimination. Like many Roma, her father lost his job as a waiter in a government institution after the fall of communism, when state enterprises were privatised.

"The employment of gypsies in Hungary has fallen drastically in the past 14 years," says Jaroka.

This removal of Roma from the workplace has cut the community off from the rest of the world, making the fight against discrimination and stereotyping harder. "Because of this there is no way for mixed friendships to form, no possibility for mixed marriages. It keeps the Roma in a social, mental and physical vicious circle," she says.

The way forward, Jaroka believes, is not to appoint a particular person or watchdog to manage Roma issues, but through "mainstreaming". A term straight from her anthropological training, this means bringing concern for Roma equality, employment and education into all policy and legislation, a technique widely used in gender equality initiatives. "Poverty and unemployment are not Roma issues, they are international problems," she says. "The EU should look at mainstreaming. Then, in the short term, we have to create programmes to improve Roma lives and fight discrimination."

She also believes her own people should take steps toward integration. "We must be brave and start making relations with the outside world," she says. "But the wider society must open itself up to the Roma first."

Since she moved into her office on the 12th floor of the 731-member Parliament, Jaroka has been joined by another Roma representative, Hungarian liberal Viktoria Mohacsi.

But Jaroka's schedule hasn't slowed down. "The only parts of Brussels and Strasbourg I've managed to see," she laughs, "are the parks and playgrounds with my little girl."