More Roma will be hired by Egida, Sofia's municipal security firm. Sofia Mayor Boiko Borissov met
with representatives of Roma organizations on Tuesday to discuss this step a week after riots in a predominantly Roma neighbourhood.

A list of 20 Roma was provided for a check under the law on the private security business before they are appointed. At present, Egida employs 14 Roma.

The Roma will be included in patrol teams in problem areas of the neighbourhoods with a predominant Roma population. Borissov said he would ask Commissioner Roumen Stoyanov, head of the Sofia Police Directorate, to place police patrols along the borders of districts where conflicts broke out.

The municipality will get 3 million euro to build homes in the Fakulteta Roma residential district, Borissov said. They will be inhabited by Roma who now live in makeshift homes in other Sofia neighbourhoods. He recalled that more Roma families would move into new homes built with EU money in the Hristo Botev neighbourhood in late September. Eighteen flats will be available there in addition to 115 already in use.

Reacting to a proposal by the Bulgarian National Union that a Bulgarian National Guard be instituted, Borissov said there was no place for vigilante committees in a EU country. Roma integration is the only policy, he said, stressing that the ethnic model based on partisan principles apparently did not work.

Address registration is one way to restrict Roma migration to Sofia while complying with the EU requirement for freedom of movement for people, Borissov said. He hopes there will not be any more cases where 300 people live at the same address, or if there are such cases, the police will send the illegal residents to the places they came from.

He also said that if the Roma population was to be engaged in dialogue, the setting up a Roma public council in the Hristo Botev neighbourhood and the appointment of representatives of the mayor in districts with a large Roma population were steps in the right directions.