EU summit is overshadowed

Thursday’s European Union summit, which was meant to have focused on how the bloc could best engage with the outside world, was overshadowed by France’s expulsion of members of the Roma community.

Immigration has always been a sensitive issue within the EU, and the individual member states, while appealing for solidarity and co-ordination on a European level, tend to be rather touchy when faced with criticism on this issue from within the Union.

Immigration is also a very delicate issue in Malta. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi was, in fact, very cautious when asked whether he thought France was right in expelling EU citizens from Romania and Bulgaria. Dr Gonzi simply said that there was a European Commission investigation underway and it wouldn’t be prudent for him to comment at this stage.

Recently, Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil voted against a European Parliament resolution – together with his European People’s Party – condemning France over its Roma expulsions. Dr Busuttil said that he did not believe the European Parliament should be used as a weapon against individual national governments.

In a way, the fact that France’s deportation of the Roma completely dominated the summit came as no surprise. EU observers were expecting French President Nicolas Sarkozy to forcefully defend his government’s policy and rebut EU criticism ever since European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding compared the French deportations “to a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War”.

Reding also called the French policy “disgraceful” and said Paris could face EU disciplinary action for the deportations.

Reding’s comments were deeply offensive to the French and the European Commission tried frantically to limit the damage before the summit began by asking the Commissioner to retract part of what she had said.

Reding, in fact, did step back from her harsh words, but did not budge an inch over her criticism of the French government’s policies. This position was echoed by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who supported his Commissioner’s stand but agreed that her comparisons to the wartime era were inappropriate.

It is interesting that Barroso, who in his first term of office shied away from criticising the large member states – principally because he depended on their votes to be re-appointed – now feels free to do just that, because he has obviously ruled out running for a third term.

In a way, Barroso set the stage for Reding’s harsh criticism of France’s deportation policy while addressing the European ­Parliament recently when he dealt with the Roma crisis by urging Europeans not to “reawaken the ghosts of the past”.

Media reports have claimed that differences over France’s deportation policy at the summit erupted into a heated debate between Sarkozy and Barroso over lunch in which the French President claimed his country’s honour had been insulted and demanded an apology.

Apparently Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi jumped to Sarkozy’s defence and claimed the Commission had overstepped its role.

Sarkozy later told the media that the European Justice Commissioner’s suggestion that France’s expulsion policies echoed those of the Nazis was “disgusting and shameful.”

He made it clear that France would continue to dismantle Roma camps, which he has described as part of a crackdown on crime.

Some observers, however, feel the crackdown on these illegal Roma camps are part of a campaign to boost Sarkozy’s credibility on law and order before the presidential election gets underway next year.

The basic issue at stake is whether France has violated EU law on the free movement of people and whether it is guilty of discrimination by giving priority to Roma when dismantling migrant settlements.

The latter accusation arose as a result of a leaked government memo in Le Monde which ­suggested the police had been given instructions to do just that, and Reding’s outburst followed this claim.

Sarkozy, however, dismissed the allegations of discrimination saying the memo had been signed by “a hapless civil servant in the dead of August” when the French government is virtually on shutdown.

Sarkozy also insisted that France always complied with EU laws. He remarked at the summit: “France has always acted and will continue to act in accordance with European law. There is nothing to get outraged about what France is doing.”

The European Commission is now investigating France’s actions and should publish its findings soon. While EU citizens have the right to move to and settle in any other EU country, they also have to keep in mind certain legal obligations.

For stays longer than three months, for example, they must be employed or self-employed or have sufficient resources so as not to become a financial burden on the state they are residing in. Free movement can also be restricted on grounds of public security. So there are certainly some restrictions applied to the principle of free movement.

Last week’s summit was certainly not one of Europe’s best, but on a more positive note the EU did agree to a free trade deal with South Korea as well as preferential trade access to Pakistan to help ease its recovery from the recent floods.