The French left joined human rights groups and specialised organisations in criticising an anti-delinquency initiative launched by French President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday (28 July), which is specifically targeted at the Roma community.
Background
According to the European Commission, Roma are the EU's largest ethnic minority, and trace their origins to medieval India. There are many Roma subgroups.
Current census statistics state that 535,000 Roma live in Romania, 370,000 in Bulgaria, 205,000 in Hungary, 89,000 in Slovakia and 108,000 in Serbia. Some 200,000 Roma are estimated to live in the Czech Republic, the same number are estimated to reside in Greece and an estimated 500,000 are in Turkey.
Many Roma from Eastern Europe moved to the West following the EU's enlargement, creating tensions in particular in Italy (EurActiv 30/06/09).
Sarkozy launched a new anti-crime initiative yesterday (28 July) targeting the "itinerant population," with a particular emphasis on the Roma community.
Among the measures launched are plans to shut down around 300 illegal camps, expulsion from the country of all Roma from Romania and Bulgaria who have committed public offences, an exchange of policemen between France and Romania, and targeted checks by the fiscal authorities of Roma with expensive SUVs.
The move was announced after some 50 'travelling people' (or gens du voyage as they are called in France) ransacked a police station and other property in Saint Aignan, Central France last week in protest at the death of a 22-year-old who was shot by police.
French human rights group Ligue des Droits de l'Homme issued a statement strongly condemning the stigmatisation of Roma people. It also criticised the "amalgamation" between French gens du voyage, who it said were French citizens living in caravans, and the 15,000 Roma present in France, who mainly originate from Romania and Bulgaria.
When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, the French government denied their citizens access to France's labour market as a transitory measure, the rights group recalls. Consequently, the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme says Roma immigrants from these two countries are reduced to living in slums as they are unable to work legally.
The French rights group called for the transitory measures to be lifted to grant Roma people access to the labour market, and wants the authorities to make use of existing mechanisms to improve their living conditions.
"It is essential for the government to stop confusing situations and acts with the origins of the persons concerned," the statement concludes.
"Nicolas Sarkozy is taking the initiative for a policy that is racial in character," the organisation Collectif des Associations Tziganes is quoted as claiming by French daily Le Figaro. The NGO warns that it could open a lawsuit against the French president for inciting racial hatred.
At a meeting of EU foreign ministers last Monday, Pierre Lellouche, French secretary of state for European affairs, called for a "European solution" to the Roma problem.
Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi told journalists in Brussels that Lellouche had demonstrated a "firm attitude" in this respect.
Bucharest reacts
"I told [Lellouche] that those nine million Roma of whom he spoke, who live in different EU countries, are European citizens, that their freedom of movement cannot be limited through legal measures, and even less by extra-judicial measures," Baconschi said.
The Romanian minister said he had told Lellouche that the EU could provide help via social inclusion programmes "both in the countries of origin and of destination".
Baconschi said such programmes should be endowed with "sufficient sums […] as to improve the education level in those communities, as well as vocational training [and] housing, in general, to improve their economic conditions".
"You know well that Romania does not accept the labelling as criminals of any ethnic group, nor their stigmatisation. Crimes are committed on an individual basis and the law has to be applied. What we can improve is cooperation between the Romanian and the French police," he concluded.
Positions
The European Commission said that under the 27-nation bloc's freedom of movement laws it was up to individual member states to decide whether to kick someone out of a country for committing a crime.
"It is really for the state to decide, so it is really a French issue and we cannot really go further than that," said a spokesman for European Justice and Fundamental Rights commissioner Viviane Reding, who has warned against Roma discrimation.
Before an EU citizen can be expelled from a member state, authorities must examine whether a crime was committed and how the person is integrated into the host country said the spokesman, Matthew Newman.
"We're not here, as the European Commission, to judge on individual cases of Roma people. It's for each government, each authority to make those decisions", he added.
Benoît Hamon, spokesperson for the opposition French Socialist Party, slammed Sarkozy for exploiting in a populist manner the cliché of associating gypsies with crime however.
"The president of the Republic communicates and tries to exploit in his tug of war with Marine Le Pen [leader of the far right Front National] the best electoral dividends of this affair," he stated, quoted by AFP.
The European Committee of Social Rights and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recently notified France that it is violating seven articles of the European Social Charter regarding gens du voyage and the Roma people.
"Surely, these are not obligatory measures, but when a country has ratified the Charter, it has taken the obligation to abide by it," a Council source is quoted by the magazine Le Point as saying.
In a Resolution on 30 June 2010, the Council of Europe reproaches France for not having established sufficient facilities for receiving displaced people, in spite of the fact that a law adopted in 2000 requires every town of more than 5,000 people to establish such areas. Only half of the areas envisaged in 2000 have been established so far, Le Point further writes.
With his poll ratings at an all-time low, Sarkozy stands accused of cynically playing the law and order card as he tries to deflect opinion from a damaging party funding scandal as well as looming economic austerity, writes Hugh Schofield, Scottish newspaper The Herald's correspondent in Paris.