It won't end prejudice, but a decision by Hungary's supreme court to compensate Roma children is a landmark ruling

The Council of Europe's Dosta campaign against Roma discrimination highlights the continued prejudices and barriers faced by Roma across Europe – prejudices that have a fundamental impact on their lives, denying them access to services we take for granted such as education and healthcare, and perpetuating their position at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale.

A recent test case in Hungary has seen the Hungarian supreme court put a value on the detrimental effects of this discrimination by awarding damages to five Roma children who were segregated by the school authorities in Miskolc, Hungary's third-largest city.

Segregation in Hungarian schools is a serious problem – the widespread stigmatisation of Roma means many parents and indeed teachers would prefer their children not to mix with Roma children in schools, or elsewhere. Indeed, often the prejudice is so deep that many Roma children are placed in schools for children with special educational needs. Despite the changes brought in by the 2004 Equal Treatment Act, which forbids segregation in the school system, the problem persists.

The case against the Miskolc authorities was brought by a small Hungarian NGO, the Chance for Children Foundation, which has been leading efforts in Hungary to raise public awareness of the issue of segregation in schools, and to draw government attention to it.

The Budapest office of international legal practice Allen & Overy became involved in the case in 2005, through the Public Interest Law Institute's Hungarian pro bono brokerage service that matches NGOs requiring legal help with lawyers and law firms willing to offer their services on a pro bono basis.

Each of the five children involved in the case was awarded damages of 100,0o0 forints ($450) – roughly three months' income for many Roma families – by a supreme court that recognised the unlawful segregation as well as its detrimental effects upon the children's education. This is a landmark ruling in Hungary that will have an impact not just on these children and their families, but, according to CFCF, could benefit more than 150,000 students.

Whilst this ruling will not end the widespread discrimination against Roma that exists in Hungary and elsewhere, it does send out a message to other authorities that the courts will uphold legislation preventing segregation, and that punitive measures will be taken against those who break it.