How powerful is the pro-Israel lobby in Europe?
I’ve just finished reading a book on CRIF, the dominant Zionist organization in France, that provides some light on that little-discussed topic in a measured and scholarly way.
Written by Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac, Le CRIF: De la Résistance juive à la tentation du lobby (CRIF: From the Jewish Resistance to the lobby temptation) traces how a supposedly broad church has come to define itself narrowly as a defender of Israel’s worst excesses.
The representative council for Jewish institutions in France, or CRIF as it’s better know, bands together more than 60 groups ranging from scouts to lawyers. Its origins were in secret meetings during the Second World War, aimed at ensuring that Jews would never again have to endure the suffering inflicted on them by the Vichy regime, which helped deport over 75,000 Jewish refugees and French citizens to Nazi death camps.
Documents studied by Ghiles-Meilhac show that when its inaugural charter was being drawn up in 1943 and 1944, there was a lively debate about whether or not it should have a Zionist orientation. Communists taking part in the drafting discussions argued forcefully and with some degree of success that it shouldn’t declare support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
That changed in 1977, when a section titled “links with Israel” was inserted into the council’s revised charter. It described the state of Israel as “the privileged expression of being Jewish”.
Snubbed by Bibi
Nonetheless, the CRIF has not always blindly followed a line dictated to it by the Israeli government. In 1999, Benjamin Netanyahu (nearing the end of his first stint as prime minister) snubbed a delegation from the council in Israel because its president Henri Hajdenberg had recently exchanged pleasantries with Yasser Arafat during a meeting in Egypt.
There is no such friction with Netanyahu this time around. In June 2009, the council threw a party in his honor when he visited Paris, giving the prime minister a “triumphal reception” (Ghiles-Meilhac’s words).
Climate of censorship
Lurching more and more to the right, CRIF has tried to create a climate of censorship. In September 2000, the TV channel France 2 broadcast images of Israeli troops killing the Palestinian child Mohammed Al-Dura. Alarmed by how the footage increased awareness among the French public about the routine violence of the Israeli state, French politician Philippe Karsenty used a CRIF event to claim that “the child is not dead” and to accuse France 2 of anti-Semitism. Four candidates for the post of CRIF’s president were in attendance when Karsenty made those remarks; none of them took issue with him.
Another channel, ARTE, was told by CRIF in 2004 that it should interest itself in themes other than the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Careful not to exaggerate CRIF’s influence, Ghiles-Meilhac identifies instances where French policy has differed from that proposed by the council. Yet he demonstrates how CRIF has become the “second voice of Israel” in France, in effect serving as an adjunct to the official Israeli embassy. Its annual dinners have offered a platform, where leading political figures make what they consider as important policy announcements. François Fillon, the prime minister, stated his intention to seek new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme at the 2010 event.
Ghiles-Meilhac agrees that CRIF enjoys close links with Nicolas Sarkozy. These were cultivated when he was minister of the interior and flaunted publicly after Sarkozy’s election as president. In 2008, Sarkozy became the first French president to attend CRIF’s annual dinner.
But it was Bernard Kouchner, foreign minister from 2007 until last year, who proved to be especially malleable. When PNGO, the Palestinian network of non-governmental organizations, was named as a recipient of a French human rights award in 2009, CRIF went ballistic. After trying to smear the reputation of the network by insinuating it was a front for Hamas, the council succeeded in having the presentation ceremony for the award moved from the Quai d’Orsay, the foreign ministry’s headquarters, to another venue.
Kouchner still turned up at the ceremony but used his speech to castigate PNGO for exhorting a boycott of Israeli goods and institutions. According to Ghiles-Meilhac, it was probably “unprecedented” for the Zionist lobby to have such a direct say in the running of an official government event and the content of the message delivered at it.
If you understand French, I’d strongly recommend that you check out this fascinating book.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 30 August 2011.
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
France heedless to Fukushima wake-up call
Back in the 1990s, I was given a guided tour of Sellafield, an infamous nuclear complex on the edge of England’s spectacularly beautiful Lake District. One of the first things I noticed was a sign reading “Mr Bean free zone” in a plant containing spent radioactive fuel. For years afterwards, I thought about the damage that a clumsy character could do in a facility like that. Today, I reckon that Mr Bean would offer a safer pair of hands than the people who run the nuclear industry.
Francis Sorin from SFEN, the French nuclear energy association, ties himself up in knots while trying to make the case that there is life for his industry after Fukushima. In a recent article, he contradicts himself in the space of the same paragraph.
“In our country which, unlike Germany, has no coal, oil or gas, nuclear is synonymous with security of supply,” he writes. “Indeed, thanks to this energy source and to the contribution of hydraulic energy, France is now capable of producing all its own electricity, quite independently of any outside market. Areva, the world’s number one producer of uranium, owns and/or exploits significant uranium mines in America, Africa and Asia. This stock of energy reserves amounts to the equivalent of 35 years of national consumption.”
One moment, Sorin is lauding how nuclear energy guarantees France independence. The next he is acknowledging how that energy depends on imported resources. And he seriously wants us to believe that nuclear is preferable to wind and solar power? That it is better to use radioactive substances transported from Africa and Asia than sources of energy that are readily available at home?
Shaky foundations
The shaky foundations of France’s nuclear industry are laid bare in a new book by Corinne Lepage, a former government minister who is now an MEP. In “La vérité sur la nucléaire” (“The Truth About Nuclear”), she excoriates how the industry has been nurtured by the state, without any proper democratic oversight. Among the sordid consequences are that malfunctions in nuclear installations have been kept secret. Details of a 1968 accident affecting the core of a reactor at Chooz, a nuclear plant near the Franco-Belgian border, were not disclosed until 1977.
Lepage makes a convincing case that the manner in which France has taken the nuclear option is illegal. Under the French constitution, the national assembly has powers to legislate on matters relating to defence and the environment. Yet even though the nuclear industry patently relates to both of those policy domains, the country’s 58 reactors were built as a result of a prime ministerial decree from 1963. The same goes for the nuclear reprocessing centre Le Hague, the French equivalent of Sellafield.
Her book also leaves the reader in no doubt that there is an unhealthily close relationship between the grandees of politics and energy. Jean-Claude Lenoir used to be in charge of buttering up parliamentary contacts for Electricité de France. He is now a parliamentarian for Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement. In 2004, he was put in charge of drafting legislation on electricity and gas.
The attempts by the nuclear industry to rebrand itself as green and as a solution to climate change look all the more cynical when you examine who that industry has hopped into bed with here in Brussels. Areva and Vattenfall say they are committed both to nuclear and renewable energy. Yet they have allied themselves with some of the world’s dirtiest men. The two firms are part of the European Energy Forum, which also includes Shell and BP, the wreckers of the Niger Delta and Gulf of Mexico respectively. The forum arranges for MEPs to go on corporate-sponsored junkets. Later this week, the forum will participate in a trip to Canada, where our elected representatives will be able to inspect work on extracting tar sands that will accelerate global warming.
Research reactor in earthquake zone
The Fukushima disaster should have shattered all illusions about the safety record of nuclear power. Yet big nukes are still being cosseted by the EU’s institutions. On 7 March – four days before the Japanese earthquake that triggered a series of meltdowns in Fukushima – the European Commission recommended that 2.5 billion euros should be allocated to nuclear research in 2012 and 2013. The EU’s governments endorsed that proposal in late June.
A particularly obscene aspect of this decision is that much of the money involved will be spent on a project called ITER, the international thermonuclear experimental reactor. It is being built in Cadarache in Provence. A 1994 paper drawn up by the French Institute for Nuclear Safety and Protection (IPSN) said that the area surrounding Cadarache is one of “destructive seismic disturbances”. Significant seismic events are likely to occur in that region about once a century, the paper noted, with the last major event of such a nature in 1913.
A few weeks before he died last year, the Nobel-winning physicist Georges Charpak urged that ITER be shelved and the money earmarked for it spent on “useful research”. Echoing his call, Lepage denounces the French government for insisting that ITER continues, against the interest of the country’s taxpayers. “The truth is that the megalomania of the nuclear lobby has put France, already in a bad financial position, in a financial vice it will be difficult to loosen,” she writes.
How much longer can policymakers be allowed remain heedless to the wake-up call from Fukushima?
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 29 August 2011.
Francis Sorin from SFEN, the French nuclear energy association, ties himself up in knots while trying to make the case that there is life for his industry after Fukushima. In a recent article, he contradicts himself in the space of the same paragraph.
“In our country which, unlike Germany, has no coal, oil or gas, nuclear is synonymous with security of supply,” he writes. “Indeed, thanks to this energy source and to the contribution of hydraulic energy, France is now capable of producing all its own electricity, quite independently of any outside market. Areva, the world’s number one producer of uranium, owns and/or exploits significant uranium mines in America, Africa and Asia. This stock of energy reserves amounts to the equivalent of 35 years of national consumption.”
One moment, Sorin is lauding how nuclear energy guarantees France independence. The next he is acknowledging how that energy depends on imported resources. And he seriously wants us to believe that nuclear is preferable to wind and solar power? That it is better to use radioactive substances transported from Africa and Asia than sources of energy that are readily available at home?
Shaky foundations
The shaky foundations of France’s nuclear industry are laid bare in a new book by Corinne Lepage, a former government minister who is now an MEP. In “La vérité sur la nucléaire” (“The Truth About Nuclear”), she excoriates how the industry has been nurtured by the state, without any proper democratic oversight. Among the sordid consequences are that malfunctions in nuclear installations have been kept secret. Details of a 1968 accident affecting the core of a reactor at Chooz, a nuclear plant near the Franco-Belgian border, were not disclosed until 1977.
Lepage makes a convincing case that the manner in which France has taken the nuclear option is illegal. Under the French constitution, the national assembly has powers to legislate on matters relating to defence and the environment. Yet even though the nuclear industry patently relates to both of those policy domains, the country’s 58 reactors were built as a result of a prime ministerial decree from 1963. The same goes for the nuclear reprocessing centre Le Hague, the French equivalent of Sellafield.
Her book also leaves the reader in no doubt that there is an unhealthily close relationship between the grandees of politics and energy. Jean-Claude Lenoir used to be in charge of buttering up parliamentary contacts for Electricité de France. He is now a parliamentarian for Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement. In 2004, he was put in charge of drafting legislation on electricity and gas.
The attempts by the nuclear industry to rebrand itself as green and as a solution to climate change look all the more cynical when you examine who that industry has hopped into bed with here in Brussels. Areva and Vattenfall say they are committed both to nuclear and renewable energy. Yet they have allied themselves with some of the world’s dirtiest men. The two firms are part of the European Energy Forum, which also includes Shell and BP, the wreckers of the Niger Delta and Gulf of Mexico respectively. The forum arranges for MEPs to go on corporate-sponsored junkets. Later this week, the forum will participate in a trip to Canada, where our elected representatives will be able to inspect work on extracting tar sands that will accelerate global warming.
Research reactor in earthquake zone
The Fukushima disaster should have shattered all illusions about the safety record of nuclear power. Yet big nukes are still being cosseted by the EU’s institutions. On 7 March – four days before the Japanese earthquake that triggered a series of meltdowns in Fukushima – the European Commission recommended that 2.5 billion euros should be allocated to nuclear research in 2012 and 2013. The EU’s governments endorsed that proposal in late June.
A particularly obscene aspect of this decision is that much of the money involved will be spent on a project called ITER, the international thermonuclear experimental reactor. It is being built in Cadarache in Provence. A 1994 paper drawn up by the French Institute for Nuclear Safety and Protection (IPSN) said that the area surrounding Cadarache is one of “destructive seismic disturbances”. Significant seismic events are likely to occur in that region about once a century, the paper noted, with the last major event of such a nature in 1913.
A few weeks before he died last year, the Nobel-winning physicist Georges Charpak urged that ITER be shelved and the money earmarked for it spent on “useful research”. Echoing his call, Lepage denounces the French government for insisting that ITER continues, against the interest of the country’s taxpayers. “The truth is that the megalomania of the nuclear lobby has put France, already in a bad financial position, in a financial vice it will be difficult to loosen,” she writes.
How much longer can policymakers be allowed remain heedless to the wake-up call from Fukushima?
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 29 August 2011.
Monday, September 13, 2010
On the margins, then expelled: how France treats Roma
Lille, France
Broken bicycles and old suitcases mark the entrance to the makeshift camp. Ankle-deep in mud that is newly wet from a rain-shower, the visitor is taken by the hand by lively children to meet their parents. “Papers?”, a woman named Elena asks, proffering her identity card. It shows she is from Romania, a member state of the European Union, just like France. In four years time, Romanian citizens will be allowed to work and live wherever they wish in the EU; for now, Elena, her family and all Roma gypsies in France face the risk that they could be expelled from the country at any moment.
In the centre of Villeneuve d’Ascq, an economically depressed suburb of Lille, transparent panels display excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone has the right to a decent standard of living, one panel proclaims. No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of property, says another.
It does not take long to find evidence of how these rights – officially regarded as fundamental by the United Nations – are being denied a short distance away. Lacking proper toilet facilities and running water, the children have to urinate on the edges of a car park. Meanwhile, the threat that the camp with its six caravans could be dismantled appears very real; bulldozers have been used to deprive other Romas of refuge nearby in recent weeks.
“We have many problems with the police,” a man called Vasir says, clearing out the boot of his car. “The police come here many times. We have no work, no money, nothing.”
The Lille region in northern France has been at the centre of efforts by the French government to drive Roma out of the country.
In July, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave an inflammatory speech, in which he blamed crime on foreigners and announced that Roma camps would not be “tolerated”. The first police operation against a Roma camp following that speech occurred in Lesquin, also near Lille. Forty-eight people and 14 caravans were “evacuated” – in the words of officialdom - during that move, kicking off a process that saw 1,000 Roma expelled from France in the month of August.
In another operation, nine adults and 12 children were forced out of their mobile homes one morning in the last week of August. The official reason given was that they were occupying private land.
The expulsions have not gone unchallenged. A Lille court has ruled twice recently against the national government’s policy that Roma camps can be considered a threat to public order. And some locals have taken to the streets of Lille, alleging that Sarkozy’s policy on Roma – coupled with his controversial efforts to cut the country’s social welfare system - are bringing shame to France.
The plight of the estimated 1,200 Roma in and around Lille has become the subject of squabbling between rival political parties, too. After Martine Aubry, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, spoke out about the expulsions, Sarkozy’s centre-right allies responded with claims of double standards. Aubry had requested that Roma be uprooted from camps earlier in the summer, when she was mayor of Lille, her rivals revealed.
Although a 2004 EU law forbids collective deportations from one of the Union’s member states to another, the Brussels authorities have been reluctant to take any action against France. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, made no reference to the French policy of expelling Roma – and similar practices in some other EU countries – when he made his first ever “State of the Union” speech Sep. 7. Barroso’s reticence came despite how he had met Sarkozy the previous day and despite how the treatment of the Roma had been discussed extensively between France and the European Commission over the previous few weeks.
Viviane Reding, Europe’s justice commissioner, has similarly declined to publicly say that France has contravened EU law, even though internal papers prepared by officials working under her direction suggest that it has. One such paper refutes French assertions that the deportations were voluntary and says that the granting of small sums of money to Roma deportees was not sufficient to ensure that France complied with EU rules on the free movement of people.
Because the European Parliament – the EU’s only directly-elected body – was on holidays in August, it was also silent about the deportations. Yet once it resumed business, the assembly approved a resolution against the French policy. Supported by 337 members of Parliament – with 245 against – the resolution rejected “any statements which link minorities and immigration with criminality and create discriminatory stereotypes”.
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 13 September 2010
Broken bicycles and old suitcases mark the entrance to the makeshift camp. Ankle-deep in mud that is newly wet from a rain-shower, the visitor is taken by the hand by lively children to meet their parents. “Papers?”, a woman named Elena asks, proffering her identity card. It shows she is from Romania, a member state of the European Union, just like France. In four years time, Romanian citizens will be allowed to work and live wherever they wish in the EU; for now, Elena, her family and all Roma gypsies in France face the risk that they could be expelled from the country at any moment.
In the centre of Villeneuve d’Ascq, an economically depressed suburb of Lille, transparent panels display excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone has the right to a decent standard of living, one panel proclaims. No-one shall be arbitrarily deprived of property, says another.
It does not take long to find evidence of how these rights – officially regarded as fundamental by the United Nations – are being denied a short distance away. Lacking proper toilet facilities and running water, the children have to urinate on the edges of a car park. Meanwhile, the threat that the camp with its six caravans could be dismantled appears very real; bulldozers have been used to deprive other Romas of refuge nearby in recent weeks.
“We have many problems with the police,” a man called Vasir says, clearing out the boot of his car. “The police come here many times. We have no work, no money, nothing.”
The Lille region in northern France has been at the centre of efforts by the French government to drive Roma out of the country.
In July, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave an inflammatory speech, in which he blamed crime on foreigners and announced that Roma camps would not be “tolerated”. The first police operation against a Roma camp following that speech occurred in Lesquin, also near Lille. Forty-eight people and 14 caravans were “evacuated” – in the words of officialdom - during that move, kicking off a process that saw 1,000 Roma expelled from France in the month of August.
In another operation, nine adults and 12 children were forced out of their mobile homes one morning in the last week of August. The official reason given was that they were occupying private land.
The expulsions have not gone unchallenged. A Lille court has ruled twice recently against the national government’s policy that Roma camps can be considered a threat to public order. And some locals have taken to the streets of Lille, alleging that Sarkozy’s policy on Roma – coupled with his controversial efforts to cut the country’s social welfare system - are bringing shame to France.
The plight of the estimated 1,200 Roma in and around Lille has become the subject of squabbling between rival political parties, too. After Martine Aubry, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, spoke out about the expulsions, Sarkozy’s centre-right allies responded with claims of double standards. Aubry had requested that Roma be uprooted from camps earlier in the summer, when she was mayor of Lille, her rivals revealed.
Although a 2004 EU law forbids collective deportations from one of the Union’s member states to another, the Brussels authorities have been reluctant to take any action against France. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, made no reference to the French policy of expelling Roma – and similar practices in some other EU countries – when he made his first ever “State of the Union” speech Sep. 7. Barroso’s reticence came despite how he had met Sarkozy the previous day and despite how the treatment of the Roma had been discussed extensively between France and the European Commission over the previous few weeks.
Viviane Reding, Europe’s justice commissioner, has similarly declined to publicly say that France has contravened EU law, even though internal papers prepared by officials working under her direction suggest that it has. One such paper refutes French assertions that the deportations were voluntary and says that the granting of small sums of money to Roma deportees was not sufficient to ensure that France complied with EU rules on the free movement of people.
Because the European Parliament – the EU’s only directly-elected body – was on holidays in August, it was also silent about the deportations. Yet once it resumed business, the assembly approved a resolution against the French policy. Supported by 337 members of Parliament – with 245 against – the resolution rejected “any statements which link minorities and immigration with criminality and create discriminatory stereotypes”.
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 13 September 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Plight of Roma low priority for EU
Roma gypsies are routinely described as Europe’s largest ethnic minority. Numbering between 10 and 16 million, their combined population exceeds that of many European Union countries. Yet their numerical strength offers no compensation for the poverty, persecution and scapegoating that the Roma have to endure – or for how their welfare is accorded a low priority by the EU’s institutions.
That few Brussels officials pay much attention to the situation facing Roma has been exemplified in recent weeks as Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in France effectively declared a war against gypsies. When the Paris authorities announced in late July that it had authorised the systematic destruction of Roma camps and the large-scale expulsion of Roma to Bulgaria and Romania, the European Commission initially insisted that the surrounding matters concerned national EU governments only.
Following the deportation of about 1,000 Roma by France during the month of August, the Commission has finally questioned the legality of these measures. In an unpublished paper, the EU’s executive arm cast doubts on assurances by Paris that all of the deportations were voluntary and therefore did not breach a 2004 law – known as the “free movement directive” – that forbids group deportations from one of the Union’s states to another.
According to the paper, the granting of lump sums ranging from 100 euros (129 dollars) for child deportees to 300 euros for adults “was not sufficient” to exempt France from the EU’s “free movement principles”.
“The response (from Brussels) has been very slow,” Sophie Kammerer from the European Network Against Racism said. “Although the measures were announced by the French at the end of July, the first press statement from Viviane Reding (the EU’s justice commissioner) wasn’t until the end of August. So almost a month passed with no reaction. Now, at least, the Commission is looking seriously into the matter.”
Kammerer noted that under EU law, deportation orders must be given in writing one month before they take effect and must allow for the possibility that they can be appealed. “Clearly, this was not respected,” she added. “The camps were dismantled one day and people were asked to leave the next day.”
So far, however, Reding has not given any indication of whether she would be willing to start legal proceedings against France. Her spokesman Matthew Newman took issue with suggestions that the Commission had dithered in reacting to the French announcement.
“The Commission has been deeply involved in Roma issues for years,” he said. “We give large sums of money to Roma integration. It is really quite surprising to hear people say we are not on top of this issue. If anything, we have been trying to raise attention to the discrimination faced by the Roma.”
France has struck a defiant tone in the contacts it has had with the EU authorities. Eric Besson, an immigration minister, insisted during a visit to Brussels last week that there have been no “collective deportations” but that some Roma have been required to leave France over their involvement in theft and “aggressive begging”. Besson claimed that France has been subject to “needless and scandalous accusations” over the measures it has taken.
The French offensive against Roma bears some similarities to an initiative unveiled by Italy in May 2008. The Italian “security package” provided for the dismantling of Roma camps and the automatic deportation of migrants who cannot prove that they have regular employment. Since then, thousands of Roma have been pushed out of Italy.
Europe’s more recent wave of attacks against Roma kicked off in July when the mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen urged the Danish national authorities to ensure that “criminal Roma” were arrested and expelled. More than 20 Roma were deported from Denmark soon afterwards.
Germany, Belgium, Britain and Sweden are among the other EU countries that have either taken action against the Roma or stated their intention to do so. Meanwhile, anti-Roma sentiment and the tendency to blame Roma for crime has been vigorously exploited by far-right politicians in many parts of Europe. The Hungarian extremist party Jobbik has called for Roma to be forced to live in segregated camps from the general population. In response to its call, the Hungarian Socialist Party said it hoped that Jobbik did not wish to have “concentration camps” erected.
And racism against Roma manifested itself in a particularly violent way in Slovakia in late August when a gunmen killed six members of a Roma family and another woman in Bratislava. Some human rights campaigners have linked the murders to the negative stereotyping of Roma by powerful European politicians.
Ivan Ivanov, director of the European Roma Information Office, the main group representing Roma in Brussels, said he had warned five years ago that his community was likely to come under attack from several EU governments. He urged the European Commission both to take robust action against France for contravening EU law and to draw up a comprehensive strategy for combating discrimination against Roma. Despite the Roma’s status as Europe’s largest ethnic minority, the Commission does not have a specific unit of officials dedicated to serving their interests. The Commission’s employment department, for example, has only one official tasked with handling issues affecting the Roma.
“The European institutions should not look at this on a case-by-case basis but should come up with a proper European approach, ” Ivanov said. “Roma are European citizens, so they should benefit from the same rights as any other European citizens.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 6 September 2010
That few Brussels officials pay much attention to the situation facing Roma has been exemplified in recent weeks as Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in France effectively declared a war against gypsies. When the Paris authorities announced in late July that it had authorised the systematic destruction of Roma camps and the large-scale expulsion of Roma to Bulgaria and Romania, the European Commission initially insisted that the surrounding matters concerned national EU governments only.
Following the deportation of about 1,000 Roma by France during the month of August, the Commission has finally questioned the legality of these measures. In an unpublished paper, the EU’s executive arm cast doubts on assurances by Paris that all of the deportations were voluntary and therefore did not breach a 2004 law – known as the “free movement directive” – that forbids group deportations from one of the Union’s states to another.
According to the paper, the granting of lump sums ranging from 100 euros (129 dollars) for child deportees to 300 euros for adults “was not sufficient” to exempt France from the EU’s “free movement principles”.
“The response (from Brussels) has been very slow,” Sophie Kammerer from the European Network Against Racism said. “Although the measures were announced by the French at the end of July, the first press statement from Viviane Reding (the EU’s justice commissioner) wasn’t until the end of August. So almost a month passed with no reaction. Now, at least, the Commission is looking seriously into the matter.”
Kammerer noted that under EU law, deportation orders must be given in writing one month before they take effect and must allow for the possibility that they can be appealed. “Clearly, this was not respected,” she added. “The camps were dismantled one day and people were asked to leave the next day.”
So far, however, Reding has not given any indication of whether she would be willing to start legal proceedings against France. Her spokesman Matthew Newman took issue with suggestions that the Commission had dithered in reacting to the French announcement.
“The Commission has been deeply involved in Roma issues for years,” he said. “We give large sums of money to Roma integration. It is really quite surprising to hear people say we are not on top of this issue. If anything, we have been trying to raise attention to the discrimination faced by the Roma.”
France has struck a defiant tone in the contacts it has had with the EU authorities. Eric Besson, an immigration minister, insisted during a visit to Brussels last week that there have been no “collective deportations” but that some Roma have been required to leave France over their involvement in theft and “aggressive begging”. Besson claimed that France has been subject to “needless and scandalous accusations” over the measures it has taken.
The French offensive against Roma bears some similarities to an initiative unveiled by Italy in May 2008. The Italian “security package” provided for the dismantling of Roma camps and the automatic deportation of migrants who cannot prove that they have regular employment. Since then, thousands of Roma have been pushed out of Italy.
Europe’s more recent wave of attacks against Roma kicked off in July when the mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen urged the Danish national authorities to ensure that “criminal Roma” were arrested and expelled. More than 20 Roma were deported from Denmark soon afterwards.
Germany, Belgium, Britain and Sweden are among the other EU countries that have either taken action against the Roma or stated their intention to do so. Meanwhile, anti-Roma sentiment and the tendency to blame Roma for crime has been vigorously exploited by far-right politicians in many parts of Europe. The Hungarian extremist party Jobbik has called for Roma to be forced to live in segregated camps from the general population. In response to its call, the Hungarian Socialist Party said it hoped that Jobbik did not wish to have “concentration camps” erected.
And racism against Roma manifested itself in a particularly violent way in Slovakia in late August when a gunmen killed six members of a Roma family and another woman in Bratislava. Some human rights campaigners have linked the murders to the negative stereotyping of Roma by powerful European politicians.
Ivan Ivanov, director of the European Roma Information Office, the main group representing Roma in Brussels, said he had warned five years ago that his community was likely to come under attack from several EU governments. He urged the European Commission both to take robust action against France for contravening EU law and to draw up a comprehensive strategy for combating discrimination against Roma. Despite the Roma’s status as Europe’s largest ethnic minority, the Commission does not have a specific unit of officials dedicated to serving their interests. The Commission’s employment department, for example, has only one official tasked with handling issues affecting the Roma.
“The European institutions should not look at this on a case-by-case basis but should come up with a proper European approach, ” Ivanov said. “Roma are European citizens, so they should benefit from the same rights as any other European citizens.”
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 6 September 2010
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