Viviane Reding - Controversy Over Roma

Controversy Over Roma

After the leak of a French Interior Ministry circular of 5 August 2010, Reding made a public statement that was interpreted as likening the 2010 French deportations of the Roma to those made from France by the occupying German forces during World War II: "I personally have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a Member State of the European Union 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".

For a while, the French government's claim that it was expelling people on legal rather than ethnic grounds was claimed to be "openly contradicted by an administrative circular issue by the same government" mentioning the illegal Romani camps specifically ("en priorité ceux des Roms"). This mention could be explained by the fact that Roma account for the overwhelming majority of foreign migrants setting up camps in France, and that "most Roma from the two countries are thought to be in France illegally". The then French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that his government had been unaware of the directive in question signed by Mr Michel Bart, the Chief of Staff of the French Minister of the Interior, and that the directive had been canceled as soon as the government became aware of it through press reports. He stated that France continues to welcome refugees and that "we refuse the creation of slums... that are unworthy of French Republic or European ideals." President Sarkozy also stated that 80% of people removed from the camps during August 2010 were of French "gens du voyage", i.e. most of the campers thus removed where not foreign citizens or Roma; and that all removals were done based on judicial decisions, i.e. they were not unilateral police operations as would be based on a circular directive.

The French government further stated that Reding had made an "unseemly blunder" and defended France as "the mother of human rights." Mr Sarkozy denounced Mrs Reding's comments as "scandalous" and stated that "if Luxembourg wants to take in Roma, that is no problem" as far as France is concerned. This statement was based on Luxembourg's own rejection of migrants, yet Luxembourg's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jean Asselborn, deemed it "malevolent". President Sarkozy pointed out that Mrs Reding had been silent during larger-scale expulsions by other countries in earlier years, including by Italy specifically of its Roma during 2009 and when police reject Romani travelers trying to enter Luxembourg. French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said that in her statement Reding "intentionally skids, if I may say, that is she uses an expression aimed to shock, that contains an anachronistic fallacy, and that creates a false amalgam".

While some media coverage and opinion leaders supported her actions, others called for her immediate resignation.

Following her initial statement, and intense discussions in the European Council and in the European Parliament, Mrs Reding announced that the European Commission intended to sue France at the European Court of Justice within two weeks. At the instigation of Mrs Reding, the European Commission later set up a Roma task force to analyse to what extent measures were being effectively taken to help the social and economic integration of Roma in Europe. Mrs Reding subsequently privately recanted the historical comparison in her initial statement. Her office apologized for the analogy. The European Commission subsequently declined to follow up on the earlier threat to sue France at the European Court of Justice, or to take other legal action on the Roma matter against France.

Subsequently, the EU said it would seek to compel European Union countries to amend their national rules to the requirements of the European Union's free movement laws, but in so doing did not deny the lawfulness of the French actions. Zoni Weisz, a Roma activist and Holocaust deportation escapee who addressed the German Bundestag's Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on 27 January 2011, praised Mrs Reding's 'clear words' in denouncing Roma expulsions. Hungarian MEP Lívia Járóka, the sole European Parliament member to have partly Roma heritage, described the root problem as "the failure of Roma integration in most member states in the last 20 years". Journalist and author Eric Zemmour commented that in this matter, "it is the European Union that is disarmed in the face of migration movements in general... European police are like Gullivers hindered in dealing with migration".

As a result of the action taken by Viviane Reding in the defense of the rights of citizens, national governments of the Member States of the European Union were obliged to put in place national strategies and concrete plans for the integration of Romani people and to report on their implementation annually.