EU chiefs sidestep fight with Paris over Roma expulsions

The European Commission yesterday attempted to avoid a collision with one of the most powerful EU states by taking only limited action against France following its expulsions of Roma gypsies.

After a lengthy and stormy meeting of the Brussels executive, the 27 commissioners tried to avoid an ugly further confrontation with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy by postponing legal action.

Instead, Brussels will send a warning letter on a secondary issue: France's failure to transpose all EU rules on free movement of European citizens into French law.

To the annoyance of some commissioners - and at the insistence of Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso - a threat of legal action against France for mass expulsions of Roma from Eastern Europe was postponed. Instead, the commission will send a letter to Paris seeking further "clarifications".

On the more academic point of the inadequacies of French laws on free movement, the commission threatened to take legal proceedings within one month which could end in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Although this is embarrassing for France, it is nothing like the humiliation of a direct Brussels action against its deportation of Roma.

Since the beginning of the year, France has sent home, by force or with a €300 ($550) voluntary payment, more than 8000 Roma who have exercised their limited EU free-movement rights to migrate from Romania or Bulgaria. Since early August, almost 100 illegal Roma camps have been bulldozed as part of a campaign ordered by Sarkozy.

France insists it has a right to expel jobless Roma who stay for longer than three months, or to deport any EU citizens who become a threat to public order. Paris insists it is not going after an entire ethnic group.

Sarkozy was drawn into an unseemly slanging match with Brussels last week after a leaked Government circular suggested there was an official policy to make a public spectacle of dismantling Roma camps. The circular spoke nine times of Roma expulsions as a "priority" and ordered officials to notify the Interior Ministry in advance of any "large" media-friendly clearances of Roma sites. European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding compared the French campaign against the Roma to Nazi behaviour during World War II. In angry exchanges at an EU summit last week, Sarkozy accused Reding of "insulting" and "wounding" France.

France later sent a letter explaining the circular had been a "mistake" and had been withdrawn.

- Independent