16th September 2010
European Union Fights With France Over Roma
Mark Hanson
The crackdown and forced deportations of the Roma in France has been met with a war of words between the French authorities and the European Union.
After a period of remaining on the fence regarding the targeting of the Roma community in France, much to the chagrin of human rights organisations, the EU commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding, has made incendiary remarks likening the French actions to the forced deportation of Jews by the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government.
In a remarkable escalation of the situation, Reding has warned that she is looking into bringing legal proceedings against France for its failure to uphold EU law.
The French have responded with a heavy attack on the EU commissioner, and claim that the French actions are fully within France’s legal rights.
Treaties of the EU enshrine the right of members of the EU to travel and live in any other EU country, and also expressly forbid any targeting of persons based purely on their ethnicity. The embarrassing leak of a circular document of the French government, which showed that the Roma were the explicit targets of the crackdown, and the fact that Romania and Bulgaria are part of the EU, leaves France on shaky ground. The Romanies have EU citizenship because they are citizens of Romania and Bulgaria.
In a stark statement, Reding said: "I am personally convinced the commission will have no choice but to initiate infringement action against France. I have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a member state just because they belong to a certain ethnic minority. This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second world war."
The events are likely to see the EU and France in a bitter dispute over which is sovereign in these matters. It could possibly bring a lasting further development of EU power over the rights of individual states.
Yet the French must be condemned for attacking the Roma. Other issues, such as the growing movement to ban the full veil for Muslim women, are also showing that the EU nations are moving towards a more profound intolerance of foreign influences, and it seems likely that the EU heavyweights could bring a less human rights conscious European Union in the future. In the meantime, however, the criticism of France by the EU has to be welcomed.
