Sarkozy threatens to block Romania's entry to border-free zone over its fleeing Roma population, writes Daniel McLaughlin
FRANCE HAS threatened to keep Romania out of the European Union’s Schengen border-free zone unless it does more to stop Gypsies leaving the country, amid calls from all sides for Brussels to play a bigger role in Roma integration across the continent.
Several hundred more Gypsies were sent back to Romania from France this week, as President Nicolas Sarkozy enforces a crackdown on crime and immigration that has drawn widespread criticism at home and abroad and strained relations with the government in Bucharest.
Yesterday, a United Nations human rights body rebuked France for its crackdown on Roma and urged the government to try to integrate members of the EU’s biggest ethnic minority as part of a Europe-wide solution.
Mr Sarkozy plans to dismantle Roma camps across France as part of a “war on delinquency”, but opponents call the move a cynical bid to revive his flagging popularity and claim that he is stigmatising immigrants – and particularly Roma – by blaming them for France’s crime problems.
French prime minister François Fillon has asked the European Commission to take steps to ensure that €4 billion in EU funds given to Romania annually were used to help integrate and improve the lot of the country’s big Gypsy population.
“France doesn’t have the judicial means to force the Romanian government to spend these funds in housing and educating its population, but Europe does,” said France’s European affairs minister François Lellouche.
“The Romanian government must make this a national priority and if it doesn’t, certain things will happen – notably concerning adhesion of Romania to Schengen,” he added.
Romania and neighbouring Bulgaria, which both joined the EU in 2007, hope next year to become part of the Schengen zone, an area comprising 25 countries with no internal borders.
Valentin Mocanu, a Romanian official dealing with Roma affairs, warned that the deportations could fuel “racism and xenophobia”, but also said Bucharest would intensify efforts to help the two million or so Gypsies living in the country of 21 million people.
“These will be immediate measures which in some cases would focus on individual families to help them settle, but also there will be broader measures on issues such as health, employment and education,” he said.
Romanian labour minister Mihai Seitan said his government had agreed with France to seek more EU funds to help Gypsies integrate in their home countries, with the aim of reducing the number that go abroad looking for jobs or better state benefits.
Central and eastern Europe, where most of the continent’s approximately 10 million Gypsies live, have a dismal record in defending Roma rights and providing them with opportunities.
Centuries-old stigma and strained government budgets create little incentive for the region’s leaders to invest in Roma projects, and Gypsy communities are blighted by abysmal standards of education, healthcare, housing and employment.
Many Roma parents are also reluctant to break with tradition and allow children to attend school rather than working in the home or on odd jobs.
What’s more, the economic crisis has strengthened right-wing groups that characterise Gypsies as criminals and benefit- scroungers, increasing ethnic tension in the EU’s newest member states.
Hungarian-born financier George Soros has ploughed some €115 million into improving conditions and increasing opportunities for Roma through his Open Society Foundations.
This week, Mr Soros condemned the French expulsions and called for the creation of “a comprehensive and effective plan for Roma inclusion at the EU level”.
Mr Soros wrote that Gypsies now “face a form of discrimination unseen in Europe since World War II” as France implicates them “as a group in criminal activity, without any legal process to determine whether individuals have committed any crime or pose a threat to public order”.
The billionaire has urged the EU to extend aid that is currently available for Roma housing projects to education, healthcare and employment programmes, and to allow structural funds to be used for health and education from early childhood, rather than only for job training as at present.
The fact that the Roma are Europe’s largest ethnic minority and the youngest and fastest- growing segment of its population makes their plight “not just a short-term security problem”, Mr Soros said, but an issue central to “peace and cohesion in societies across Europe.”