France hit back at the European Commission today in a row over Paris's crackdown on Roma migrants, accusing an official at the European Union's executive body of overstepping the mark in her criticism.
European affairs minister Pierre Lellouche accused European justice commissioner Viviane Reding of unjustifiably suggesting that the expulsions of Roma from France smacked of the Nazi persecution of gypsies during World War Two.
"There's a limit to my patience," Mr Lellouche said, echoing Ms Reding in her criticism of France.
"This kind of outburst is not appropriate."
On the eve of a European Union leaders' meeting in Brussels, president Nicolas Sarkozy's office described Ms Reding's remarks as "simply unacceptable", according to an official at the presidential Elysee Palace.
In an unusually strong attack on an EU government, Ms Reding told reporters in Brussels yesterday that Paris had broken EU law on the free movement of people and that legal proceedings against France would probably start within weeks.
Referring to Nazi Germany's persecution of gypsies during the second World War, Ms Reding said she was afraid about ethnic targeting and the darkness of Europe's past returning.
"This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second World War," she said.
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, stood by Ms Reding today, saying she had run her comments by him before she made them. However, he said she may have spoken too emotionally on some points.
"One or the other expression used in the heat of the moment may have given rise to misunderstandings," he told reporters. "Reding did not want to establish any parallelism between what happened in World War Two and the present."
European leaders from centre-right parties, who gather in Brussels this evening ahead of tomorrow's summit, are due to discuss the issue in more depth, officials said.
Mr Lellouche defended his government's strategy of dismantling illegal campsites across the country and sending Roma migrants back by plane to Romania and Bulgaria.
"A plane ticket back to the European Union country of origin is not the same thing as death trains and the gas chambers," he said.
"I cannot let Mrs Reding say that France in 2010, in its handling of the Roma issue, is the same as Vichy France."
France stepped up the expulsion of Roma migrants during the summer, rounding up families in illegal camps and offering them a financial incentive to leave the country as part of an initiative by Mr Sarkozy to tighten security.
More than 8,000 expulsions have taken place this year.
Human rights groups, the Catholic Church and some ministers in Mr Sarkozy's own government have condemned the removals, saying they were part of efforts by Mr Sarkozy to boost his flagging popularity at a time of unpopular budget cuts.
Tough law-and-order rhetoric played a key part in Mr Sarkozy's election victory in 2007 and the next election in early 2012 is starting to loom large in French political life.
Under EU law, Roma are free to move anywhere in the union and stay for up to three months. After that, they must have found work or be paying into a social security system. Many do not and are frequently marginalised in their host EU countries.
Reuters