FRENCH PRIME minister François Fillon has admitted there is “unease” within the ruling centre-right bloc over the government’s security measures after a senior minister said he had considered resigning over the crackdown on Roma camps.
Although he defended government policy, Mr Fillon used his first public remarks on the Roma controversy to acknowledge that there were “differences” and some “unease” among members of the ruling bloc. “Nobody would believe it if I said there were not debates among us on this or that subject,” he said. “It wouldn’t be credible.”
He was speaking after foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said he had considered resigning over the controversy about the government’s high-profile dismantling of Roma encampments.
“Yes, I considered it, but to what end?” Mr Kouchner told RTL radio. “It’s difficult, but I have to confront reality,” he said, adding that there was “repression and slavery” within the Roma population. Mr Kouchner said he discussed the issue with Mr Sarkozy, but had ultimately decided not to step down.
Several hundred more Roma gypsies were sent back to Romania from France last week, as Mr Sarkozy enforced a crackdown on crime and immigration that has drawn widespread criticism at home and abroad and strained relations with the government in Bucharest. France has threatened to keep Romania out of the EU’s Schengen border-free zone unless it does more to stop Roma leaving Romania.
Asked about Mr Sarkozy’s strongly worded speech in Grenoble in July, which set the tone for a fraught month-long debate over immigration and crime, Mr Fillon hinted that he would have used different language. “Everyone has his sensibility and his way of doing things,” he remarked.
The prime minister staunchly defended the government’s policies, however, and said the measures included in Mr Sarkozy’s Grenoble speech had been discussed with colleagues in advance. “To say that 15 per cent of juvenile delinquency in Paris today is down to young Romanians is not to stigmatise a community – it’s simply to note that there’s a problem,” Mr Fillon said.
In his Grenoble speech, the president suggested French citizenship should be stripped from anyone of foreign origin who threatened the life of a police officer, and said he wanted to increase prison sentences for violent crimes. He broke a mainstream French taboo by drawing a connection between crime and immigration, and said integration measures had failed over decades.
Mr Fillon criticised the “one-upmanship” among members of the ruling bloc who had joined in the debate on security over the summer “for political reasons”. “There have been certain remarks made within my own camp that I don’t accept,” he said – a possible allusion to ministers’ suggestions that mayors could be sanctioned for not being tough enough on delinquents, and that polygamists could be stripped of their French citizenship.
As the Roma deportations continued to dominate the headlines, Socialist leader Martine Aubry used a 90-minute speech at her party’s summer school to accuse Mr Sarkozy of bringing “shame” to the country and damaging its image abroad.
The Socialist Party is preparing for the 2012 presidential race and will hold primaries in the autumn of 2011 to pick its candidate. “We want to embody tomorrow’s alternative,” Ms Aubry told supporters in La Rochelle. “We will be there in 2012 to build a new France.”