The initiative, launched in early March at a summit meeting in Bulgaria, should become a European New Deal for the people that does not have its own state and that represents the largest ethnic minority in Europe.
According to official statistics, there are 9,640 Roma in Croatia.
"According to estimates, there are 20-30 thousand, but many do not declare themselves as Roma," the head of the Croatian government's ethnic minorities office, Milena Klajner, has told Hina.
When in January government officials and representatives of women's nongovernmental organisations informed the relevant UN Committee about the Implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in Croatia, a separate report compiled by the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) on the grave position of Roma women in Croatia was assessed as not corresponding to the real situation.
The report was based on 'partial tours of' the ground and was not a result of permanent research. It also painted a "distorted picture" which can only be detrimental to Croatian Roma, said Bajro Bajric, the head of the association called Roma for Roma in Croatia.
Bajric told Hina that he would ask the ERRC to offer a "public apology" over the report.
A few other Croatian Roma representatives distanced themselves from the ERRC reports, and Josip Balog, the head of the Medjumurje Roma Association, branded it as "fabrications and lies".
The head of the government's office for gender equality, Helena Stimac Radin, has said that the "Council of Europe described the 2003 Croatian programme for Roma as one of the best", and Bajric told Hina that the treatment of Roma by the state was now very good.
According to Milena Klajner, the greatest headway was made in the education of Roma children. In this context, a history teacher, Toni Marusic, who works in a primary school in the Croatian region of Medjimurje, said that the best results were achieved with the introduction of free-of-charge pre-school programmes for Roma.
Marusic added that it was necessary to develop awareness among Roma that the education could offer them a brighter future.
Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, who is the chairwoman of the commission for the implementation of the National Programme for the Roma, has also underlined the importance in the change of the attitude and the necessity to enhance public sensitiveness to Roma problems,