Manuel Valls feels strongly about the Roma gypsies staying

The European Union has warned France it could face sanctions over the treatment of its Roma community after the interior minister said the majority should be deported and that France was "not here to welcome these populations".

The European Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly warned France that "free circulation and the freedom to live in other countries" within the European Union were fundamental rights written into treaties and if they weren't respected the commission would use "all the means at its disposal to sanction violations".

He said: "Roma, like all EU citizens, have the freedom to circulate freely in all member states of the EU and to live in a country other than their country of origin."

The angry response from Brussels comes six months before local elections in which several political parties, ranging from the far-right to the Socialists in power, have seized on the issue of the Roma's illegal camps, portraying the ethnic minority's presence as threat to French people. The popular and outspoken interior minister Manuel Valls told the radio station France Inter on Tuesday that "these populations have lifestyles that are very different from ours, and are clearly in confrontation" with the lifestyle of the French. He said few Roma could integrate into French society.

He added that only a "few families" could be allowed to settle while there was "no other solution" than dismantling illegal Roma camps and repatriating individuals, he said.

His comments came a day after police swooped on two Roma camps outside Paris, arresting six people in relation to the theft of metal cables. They came in a week that saw a French judge sparked condemnation for exclaiming during a trial over stolen copper cables: "Don't you think France has had enough of thefts committed by Roma?"

Arnaud Montebourg, the industrial recovery minister said: "I think there exists no theory whereby a particular population, or a person of a given origin cannot integrate (into French society).

"They said that of Italians, they said that of Spanish, they said that of the Portugese, they said that of the Arabs." 
{ and  Val says some we know - mentioning no names, nudge,nudge, wink, wink,  may say that of the English.]
Report,  bits  from the Guardian and Telegraph
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