Paris: France on Wednesday called on the European Commission to force Romania to stem the flow of Roma leaving the country, suggesting it could block Bucharest's entry to the Schengen border-free zone if it fails to do so.
Raising the stakes as Romanian officials arrived in Paris for talks, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government defended its repatriation of hundreds of Roma in recent weeks and said the mass emigration from Romania had become a European problem.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon wrote to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Wednesday, asking him to take steps to ensure that 4 billion euros in European Union funds given to Romania annually were used to settle the Roma.
"France doesn't have the judicial means to force the Romanian government to spend these funds in housing and educating its population," European Affairs minister Francois Lellouche told Europe 1 radio. "But Europe can, and that is why the prime minister wrote to Mr Barroso today."
Crackdown
Since announcing plans in late July to demolish hundreds of illegal Roma camps in a crime crackdown, France's centre-right government has repatriated more than 600 Roma, mostly to Romania. Critics have denounced the move at the political level as a ploy to boost Sarkozy's flagging popularity before elections in 2012 and divert attention from unpopular plans to raise the French retirement age and cut public spending.
