Roelie Post was the Commission’s first child-rights expert on the Romanian Children File. She documented how intercountry adoption worked as a market for children — and was fired after she would not stop saying so.
A public record of the whistleblowing
The work
Romania’s child-protection reform
From 1999 to 2005 Post supported Romania in reforming its child-protection system on the basis of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Tens of thousands of children had been sent abroad in the 1990s. In 2001 Romania shut the trade down. The reformed system had no place, and no need, for intercountry adoption.
Parked, then fired
Pressure from outside and inside the EU ended her work on children’s rights inside the Commission. She was seconded to Against Child Trafficking, an NGO set up to hold her while the adoption lobby took positions in the Commission and the Parliament. The secondment ended on 1 August 2014. Reintegration failed. She was dismissed in August 2018.
“Intercountry adoption is legalised child trafficking. A white child costs more than a black child. If that is not a market, what is?”Roelie Post, de Volkskrant, 2007
Short timeline
1983 Joins the European Commission – DG HR. Later works in DG Agriculture.
1999 Appointed task manager for the Romanian Children File and minorities, DG Enlargement. Becomes the Commission’s first child-rights expert.
2001–05 Romania stops intercountry adoption. A lobby in Paris, Rome and Washington tries to reopen it. Post is removed from the file.
2007 Publishes Romania For Export Only: The untold story of the Romanian ‘orphans’.
2008 Against Child Trafficking is set up. Seconded there until 1 August 2014. Work includes cases in Ethiopia, India, China, Malawi and the EU.
2018 Dismissed by the European Commission, effective 1 August.
2019 Dutch Parliament unanimously asks the government to work with First Vice-President Frans Timmermans on a solution for the whistleblower and the adoption issue.
2021 The Dutch House for Whistleblowers concludes she did blow the whistle and advises the Commission to review the dismissal.
2023 The Commission refuses to review. A request to the Belgian EU Presidency produces no protection.