Forced evictions, discrimination continue to afflict Bulgaria's Roma minority

Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007 and is its poorest member, has one of the bloc's largest Roma minorities. According to the 2011 census, there were 325,000 Roma people comprising about 5 percent of Bulgaria's 7.3 million people. The European Commission, however, estimates there are more than twice as many Roma - about 750,000 people.

As in other EU countries, many Roma live on the fringes of society and struggle for work - with those in small settlements facing legal problems when it comes to land ownership, says the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), a human rights group.

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