Brussels, 23/08/2012 (Agence Europe) - Two years after a memorable heated exchange between European Commissioner Viviane Reding and former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the European Commission welcomed on Wednesday evening the new Ayrault government's announcements on the integration of Roma, especially in the job market. The Commission also called on Paris to lift the set of restrictions still in force as soon as possible. Indeed the government organised an interministerial seminar on Wednesday 22 August in order to identify all the measures enabling better integration of the Roma people. After a spate of dismantling camps, ordered by the law and overseen by the minister of the interior, and measures aiming to evict Roma citizens, the Commission had wanted to place Paris under surveillance on 10 August 2011, asking the French government to supply it at the end of that month with all the details of the ways these camps were dismantled and the ways Roma were evicted from French territory. On Wednesday morning the commissioner for fundamental rights, Viviane Reding, said again in an interview with Belgian daily Le Soir that she was waiting for “concrete measures” from Paris in favour of Roma inclusion, which the government duly submitted.
Some of the decisions announced on Wednesday will particularly facilitate integration through work by waiving the tax on employers of Roma to the French office of immigration and integration (Ofii) and by broadening the range of jobs accessible to the Roma people, the government said. It again said that it would examine, after discussions with the states concerned, Romania and Bulgaria, the possible early lifting of the provisional measures which restrict Roma access to the French job market. These provisional measures, still in place in eight member states, are to be applied until the end of 2013 and include in particular requiring Romanian and Bulgarian nationals to have a work permit if they want to work in certain sectors.
France also said on Wednesday that it wanted the question of the Roma in Europe to be one of the subjects at the next European summit on 18-19 October and it has requested the Cypriot Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers to work on this.
The European Commission has welcomed these announcements and congratulated the very constructive spirit of the French government in its search for suitable solutions, as well as its willingness to cooperate with the Commission and other member states of the European Union, Commission spokesperson Olivier Bailly said. The Commission, which is nevertheless waiting for these announcements to be followed by concrete action, has also said it is ready to support the French government for better management of the conditions in which the camps are dismantled. It especially stressed the social impact of dismantling the camps and welcomed the commitments to bring alternative accommodation solutions for the people concerned, Bailly said. The Commission has already released €470,000 in European regional funds, he said, to help projects for integration villages, such as those in Lille and Lyon. Bailly said it now remains for the fruit of these commitments to be seen.
European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Laszlo Andor also welcomed “a step in the right direction”, while Romania congratulated the French decision to soften the constraints on the access of Romanian and Bulgarian citizens to work - “one of the essential conditions for facilitating the social integration of the Roma people”, the government said in a press release quoted by AFP (our translation). (SP/transl.fl)