THE ROW over France’s repatriation of Roma migrants put President Nicolas Sarkozy at odds with Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday, with the German leader having to deny claims by her French counterpart that she planned to clear camps in her own country.
At a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, the French president told reporters he had Ms Merkel’s “complete and total” support over the “form and tone” of justice commissioner Viviane Reding’s scathing criticism of the French government this week.
Threatening Paris with legal action over its crackdown on Roma camps, Ms Reding invoked Nazi persecution of minorities during the second World War, though she later said she regretted suggesting the comparison.
“Madame Merkel indicated to me her desire to proceed with the evacuation of camps in the coming weeks,” a visibly irate Mr Sarkozy said after a tense meeting dominated by his dispute with the commission. “We’ll see how much calm reigns in German politics then.” A spokesman for the chancellor denied she had said anything of the sort, however, and indicated Berlin supported the substance of the commission’s stance on the Roma question.
“Chancellor Merkel spoke neither during the European Council nor during talks with French president Sarkozy on the sidelines of the council about supposed Roma encampments in Germany, not to mention their clearance,” her spokesman said in a statement.
“The government supports France with regard to the form and tone of the criticism from EU commissioner Reding,” he added.
The spokesman said the issue of Roma in Germany “played no role at all in the talks” between Ms Merkel and her French counterpart.
France began its high-profile campaign against illegal camps this summer and has repatriated about 1,000 Roma migrants to Romania and Bulgaria in the past two months. The government says three quarters of those removed from illegal camps were French citizens, and that all repatriations have been voluntary.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner described the exchange between Mr Sarkozy and commission president Jose Manuel Barroso as “lively and sincere”, but he could not confirm that Ms Merkel told the French president that Germany too planned to repatriate Roma.
“I did not witness this, although I was there throughout this particular moment,” Mr Kouchner told RTL radio. “President Sarkozy did not tell me anything in particular on this issue. I do not know if this discussion was an aside.”
Ms Reding infuriated the French government when she evoked Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and gypsies in connection with France’s repatriation of Roma migrants. After an angry exchange with Mr Sarkozy at Thursday’s summit, Mr Barroso distanced himself from Ms Reding’s comments but said, in a clear reference to the French reaction, that “others should think about doing the same”. The French president has called Ms Reding’s claims “outrageous” and “insulting”, and suggested that her home state of Luxembourg should open its doors to Roma migrants.
The Élysée Palace made no comment on the denial from Berlin yesterday, but senior figures on both sides sought to play down the significance of the episode.
French minister for European affairs Pierre Lellouche insisted there was no problem in Franco-German relations, while German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle also struck a diplomatic tone. “I can only attribute this to a misunderstanding,” he said in Berlin. “German-French relations are absolutely stable.”