A Roma nun from Slovakia has said that membership of the European Union has done little to help eastern Europe's large Gypsy minority, despite pledges of support after most countries in the region entered the now 27-nation grouping in 2004.

"The [European Union] is supposed to have brought better conditions here but most Roma communities are still just as poor and downtrodden,” said Atanazia Holubova, a sister of Slovakia's Greek Catholic Church, which follows the Eastern liturgy but is in communion with the pope. "Although funds had been earmarked for Roma communities by the EU's governing commission, these were often diverted for other uses by local administrators," Holubova told Ecumenical News International.