Reading Too Much and Too Little into the Matter? Latent Limits… 141 p­ articularly highlighted the position of another marginalized minority in the EU: Romani migrants. Before 2014 British newspapers were implying that once the work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens were been lifted, the UK would face an ‘invasion of Roma’. Newspapers such as Daily Mail adopted a xenophobic stance toward Romani migrants with headlines such as ‘Roma already “defecating at our doorsteps.”’3 Such reporting reinforced a common misconception that Roma have a propensity to migrate from post-socialist EU Member States to the more prosperous ones, where they would become a burden on the social welfare systems. In accordance with the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria, the EU paid particular attention to the minority protection of Roma in the post-socialist countries, which had a candidate country status before joining the EU in 2004 and 2007 respectively. As some scholars argued,4 this was not merely out of humanitarian concern for this marginalized population. Such emphasis on the position of Roma was also present because of the fear that once the EU free movement policy was coupled with perceived Romani nomadism and discrimination in their own states it would become a conglomerate of push and pull factors for ‘Romani mass migration’. However, this is another clear example of reading too much into the potential of EU freedom of movement. According to the very small number of available studies, such as the one by Elspeth Guild and Claude Cahn,5 Romani migrants represent a miniscule proportion of all EU migrants. In addition, their migration cannot be explained simply by the theory of push and pull factors. It also does not clearly fit the presumption that EU freedom of movement is flattening socio-economic disparities between EU Member States especially for the poorest individuals. According to the study by Maria Pantea, Romani individuals who belong to the ‘poorest of the poor’ are among the most immobile EU citizens. Maria Pantea argued that Romani 3 4 5 ‘Roma already in Britain “are defecating on people’s doorsteps” says top Tory council leader as she warns of burden that Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants will place on public services’, Mail Online, 31 December 2013, available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531793/ Roma-Britain-defecating-peoples-doorsteps-says-Tory-council-leader-warnsburden-Romanian-Bulgarian-immigrants-place-public-services.html. Kymlicka, W. (2007), Multicultural Odysseys. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cahn, C. & E. Guild (2010), ‘Recent migration of Roma in Europe’, 2nd edition, OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, available at: https://www.gfmd.org/ recent-migration-roma-europe-claude-cahn-and-elspeth-guild.