Sarkozy losing against Romani migrants - he deports them, they return

Last year French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the liquidation of most of the illegal camps in the country inhabited by Romani migrants. He also offered to pay the travel costs for the camp residents to return to their home countries.

It has now been a year since the French leader gave his speech on the topic of the “Roma question” in Grenoble, but nothing about the overall situation has changed. Organizations supporting Romani people, quoted in the French daily Le Monde, report that as many as 15 000 illegal Romani immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania remain in the country.

Sarkozy is now being taken to task by the opposition over this issue, both by the ultra-nationalist National Front and by the Socialists. The opposition says he has not kept the promises he made in this regard a year ago, nor could he ever have.

The Romani people whose travel back to Bucharest and Sofia was paid by the French authorities simply caught the next return buses and returned to France. However, they no longer have campsites available to them on the periphery of Paris or other large cities and are instead taking up residence wherever they can.

This full article (in Czech only) is available at http://aktualne.centrum.cz/zahranici/evropa/clanek.phtml?id=709482