European leaders disavow criticism of France’s Roma deportations
In the run-up to yesterday’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels, European officials and heads of state disavowed criticisms of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s mass deportation of Roma by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.
France has already deported over 8,000 Roma to Romania. While the summit endorsed a free trade deal with South Korea and temporarily waived tariffs on Pakistani goods, coverage of the meeting largely focused on the Roma issue. On Tuesday, Reding denounced Sarkozy’s policy as
“discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race”. She implicitly compared it to fascist ethnic cleansing policies, such as Vichy France’s policy of deporting the Roma during the Nazi Occupation, adding, “This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War”.
Whatever the political calculations that prompted it, including a desire to obscure the prevalence of similar xenophobic policies by other member states and the EU authorities themselves, Reding’s statement articulated concerns shared by millions of people.
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