France's Hollande Urged to Act As Roma Row Splits Govt

France's Hollande urged to act as Roma row splits govt

ByAngus MacKinnon

Published September 30, 2013 AFP

President Francois Hollande was under mounting pressure to call his squabbling ministers to order Monday as a row over the treatment of France's Roma population rumbled on.Against a background of opposition claims the Socialist-Green coalition is in disarray over the issue, Hollande has so far declined to get embroiled in the dispute triggered by Interior Minister Manuel Valls's claim that most Roma in France will never integrate and should be sent back to their countries of origin. Valls, who has also championed a controversial policy of dismantling illegal Roma encampments and deporting their residents, has been publicly criticized by at least three cabinet colleagues and the row has strained relations between Hollande's Socialist Party and their junior governing partners, the Greens.The opposition has been quick to pounce on an episode they say has once again exposed Hollande's tendency to dither when confronted with difficult decisions."A government where you have some ministers organizing attacks on other ministers cannot last," said Francois Bayrou, the leader of the centrist MoDem party. "Coherence has to be re-established and that is the responsibility of the president and the prime minister."The sniping at Valls from the Green and left of his own party continued unabated on Monday with Green Senator Esther Benbassa branding his attitudes on the Roma as "quite simply unacceptable."She added: "These (Valls's) comments recall the darkest hours of our history. There is no such thing as a people who cannot be assimilated, only countries who do not make them welcome."Housing minister Cecile Duflot, the most senior Green in the government, has accused Valls of betraying France's core values and urged Hollande to call the outspoken interior minister to order. Valls has denounced that claim as "unacceptable."DelphineBatho, a Socialist former minister who was sacked by Hollande in July for criticizing government spending cuts, accused the president of double standards."I was pushed out the door supposedly as a show of authority, but there hasn't been much of that on show in other cases," Batho said.

Valls meanwhile was basking in the glow of evidence that his stance on the Roma issue has bolstered his status as the most popular minister in Hollande's government.A poll published at the weekend revealed that more than three in four (77 percent) voters believe he was right to say Roma migrants should be "delivered back to the border."The minister was in unrepentant mood during a round of interviews on Sunday, in which he highlighted figures indicating that a disproportionate amount of petty crime in Paris is committed by minors who are nationals of Romania, from where the majority of recent Roma arrivals in France originate.The extent to which the issue has gripped the country was reflected in the high-profile coverage given to a court case opening on Monday in which 27 members of three Roma families are accused of grooming children to become thieves.Several of the accused are charged with people trafficking on the basis of evidence that some minors were traded between families in return for payment.The defense contests the charges and says the payments could be explained by traditional dowry arrangements."I hope there will not be a judicial stigmatization as there is currently a political stigmatization," said Alain Behr, a lawyer for one of the defendants.Earlier this month, a magistrate in the southern city of Toulouse sparked outrage during his summing up of a case in which he told four defendants: "Don't you think France has had enough of Roma stealing?"

France's Hollande Reprimands Ministers For Anti-Roma Rhetoric As Leadership, Coalition Called Into Question

Reuters|Posted:10/02/2013 8:01 am EDT

PARIS, Oct 2 (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande told two of his top ministers on Wednesday they should end a public row over France's policy towards its Roma population if they wanted to stay in his government.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls last week said most of some 20,000 Roma housed in makeshift camps around French cities could never be integrated into French society and so should be "taken back to the border" for transfer back to Romania and Bulgaria.
Housing Minister Cecile Duflot, a leader of the ecologist Greens coalition partners to the ruling Socialists, denounced Valls for betraying the core human rights values that France prided itself on, and demanded that Hollande reprimand him.
Seeking to heal a widening rift between centrists and left-wingers in his coalition over the issue, Hollande took both Duflot and Valls to task at his weekly cabinet meeting.
"I insist that all ministers pay full mind to their mission, their behaviour, how they express themselves and of course, how they act," Hollande told the meeting, according to presidential aides.
"Being a member of a government does not mean you cannot have your point of view but it does mean you have to strictly apply the rules I have just set out," he said, adding: "the debate should be inside the government not in public".
The dispute not only exposed tensions within Hollande's 17-month-old coalition but raised new questions over the authority of the president, whose poll ratings have fallen to 23 percent amid dissatisfaction over his record on the economy and jobs.
Hollande said he was also asking Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who is suffering from low popularity ratings too, to ensure better coordination in the government.
The far-right National Front has signaled it plans to make the Roma issue a central campaign theme for next March's municipal elections. It is hopeful it can tap a protest vote against Hollande to score gains in town halls across France.
Valls' tough talk on law and order has made him Hollande's most popular government minister. A poll released at the weekend showed three-quarters of French agreed with his comments on the Roma.
Hollande's government has sought to distance itself from a hard-line policy under conservative former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who explicitly accused Roma of links to crime and launched a programme of deportations.
Yet since the beginning of the year some 13,000 Roma have been evicted from illegal camps and welfare groups say the failure of schemes to re-house their inhabitants means they find themselves on the streets or simply set up new camps elsewhere.
Moreover France this week said it was currently opposed to Romania and Bulgaria joining the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone when current restrictions on the movement of Romanian and Bulgarian citizens end in January 2014.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France was concerned about the ability of Romanian and Bulgarian authorities to ensure border security, airing concerns that are also shared by Germany.
However Hollande said all efforts would be made to integrate Roma into society where possible, calling government policy "firm but human".

(Reporting by JulienPonthus; writing by Mark John; editing by Brian Love)