Thursday, September 9, 2010

The forced evacuation of Roma camps in France and Italy shows the internal labour market in the EU needs reviewed and amended at source














Dear All

The French on occasion do things which are quite surprising, the removal of the Roma community from makeshift camps and deporting them is certainly one of them.

This raises a question, should the French Government have control of immigration and the movement of labour inside their borders?

I would say that the answer to this fundamental question is yes, the French Government has such a responsibility in order to protect the state and the people within it.

The European Union has grown but with that growth there needs to be change to the Charter of Europe in order to make it fit for purpose.

I support free movement of labour as everyone recognises that is a good thing within the community.

Where the European dream has gone wrong is that the labour market and all additional services that flow from it were never properly regulated.

So we end up with a situation were people travel to another part of the union with no job and no home ending up living rough with no prospects.

This is not the European vision as it was meant to be.

And is it any surprise that incidents of crime flourish?

President Nicolas Sarkozy and his government have been accused of stigmatising minorities by their forced evacuation of Roma camps and send them back to Romania.

Unsurprisingly his right views have provoked Human rights, anti-racism groups, labour unions and leftist political parties to demonstrate against the actions taken against Roma.

You could say this action is a standard response by the left, branding Sarkozy in effect as a racist.

What is the left’s solution to the problem of people living in camps?

Apparently, other then protesting they don’t have any solutions, their tactics of protest with solutions is more politics than Sarkozy’s actions.

Sarkozy is a former hardline interior minister and insists the new measures announced have to do with the fight against crime and restoring public order.

President Sarkozy has often built his electoral successes on his image, that image is as one of the toughest crime fighters in France.

And he says that the Roma camps are linked to crime, calling their camps sources of prostitution and child exploitation.

Sometime ago, the Sunday Herald published a story on Roma crime in Glasgow.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/the-child-sex-scandal-on-the-streets-of-scotland-1.827784

The date of this published story is 4th August 2007.

Reading the stories published by the Sunday Herald, it clearly highlights the problem is one of integration.

The European Union must face up to the fact that the Charter which allows free movement of labour must be reviewed and amended because as seen in France and Italy were Roma are also being removed, regulation is long overdue.

As the external immigration market is regulated, the internal market needs the same scrutiny.

Only then can the European dream be realised by all its citizens.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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