Prospect of French 'anti-Roma' summit disturbs EU presidency
Belgium, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, may reject France’s invitation to a ministerial meeting for fear that Paris wants to use the event to legitimise its policy of rounding up and expelling Roma.
"If it begins to be apparent that the meeting is only a meeting on the Roma and for France with their policy to give the impression that other EU countries approve of what they are doing, Belgium will not be keen to attend," an EU diplomatic source told EUobserver.
France’s immigration minister, Eric Besson, has invited his counterparts from four of the EU’s other "Big Six" major economies – Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK – to an informal meeting on immigration in Paris on 6 September.
Belgium is also on the list, as is Greece, a major transit country for migrants attempting to enter the EU, and, even more unusually, Canada.
Another EU diplomat told this website that Paris wants Canada at the meeting because Ottawa currently has "a number of different, specific problems with the EU and Roma coming from the Czech Republic and Hungary."
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