Sarkozy's crackdown is meeting opposition at local level, where the left is often in control, writes RUADHÁN Mac CORMAICin Choisy-le-Roi
TUCKED INTO a secluded car park between an abandoned factory and the train tracks that link Choisy-le-Roi to Paris to the north, it must be one of the least obtrusive sites in town. Twenty-one caravans are squeezed into the tight space, while around them children run about and workmen busy themselves installing new showers, toilets and kitchenettes.
The site’s seclusion is probably no accident. As the central government pursues its contentious crackdown on illegal Roma camps across France, Choisy’s newest halting site is a small – and, by its officials’ own admission, not widely popular – act of defiance by the town’s communist mayor.
At 6am on August 12th, as the government’s campaign was getting under way, more than 100 police officers arrived at a three-month-old Roma camp under a local motorway bridge and ordered the 60 occupants to leave.
Their vehicles were confiscated and the camp dismantled, leaving the families at the roadside.
“From a humanitarian point of view, we couldn’t leave them at the side of the road with their children,” says Gérard Chambon, the official from the mayor’s office who has co-ordinated its response. “There was a two-week-old child among them. There were elderly people.”
The mayor’s office first opened a local gymnasium to accommodate the families. They spent a month there, sleeping in rows on the floor while the town hall searched for a better site. When the car park was finally secured, the Fondation Abbé Pierre, a charity, arranged for the purchase of 20 caravans and new facilities, and the 60 migrants moved in last last week.
“It’s very good here,” says Rodica Novacovici, a 36-year-old from Timisoara in Romania who has lived in France since 2002. “The site is clean, there’s electricity, we have running water, they’re building a kitchen. And there are toilets and showers.” The children in the group are now enrolled in school for the first time.
“Being in the gymnasium was better than being out on the street, but it was difficult with so many people and the children all living together in one room . . . It’s very good now.”
Novacovici, who sustains her daughter and two grandchildren by selling flowers near the Champs-Élysées in Paris, has travelled widely. Last year she spent a few months in Dublin, where she stayed with friends and sold flowers outside Dublin nightclubs, but left because the cost of living was so high and returned to France.
Most of the Roma in Choisy discount the possibility of ever returning to Romania. By busking illegally on RER suburban trains, Dorin Bote, a saxophonist who shares a caravan with his wife and eight-year-old son, says he makes between €10 and €15 a day – enough to feed his family.
“In Romania there’s no work, or it’s very badly paid. You’d make about €150 a month, and that’s 12 hours a day on a building site.”
Choisy’s predicament reflects the tensions that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Roma crackdown has revealed at local level. In France, the local prefect – the government’s representative in each of the départements – has overall responsibility for security, but in many parts of the country, local government is dominated by the left-wing opposition.
In defence of its Roma policy, the government points out that illegal camps have been dismantled only after a judge has granted a warrant. It says Roma migrants are disproportionately involved in crime, that the number of repatriations has not risen significantly this year and that nobody has been sent home without their consent.
At Choisy’s town hall, however, Chambon is furious over the lack of preparation for the latest campaign.
“The government is bringing shame on France. We give lectures on human rights to everyone else, but we’re not very well placed to talk,” he says.
“From an efficiency point of view, it’s hopeless . . . The state has no interest in the solution, which means it always falls one way or another on local government.” The awkward question for the authorities in Choisy is what happens next.
Local residents are unhappy about the new camp, and the Roma migrants cannot be sustained by voluntary groups indefinitely. Even critics of Sarkozy’s tactics accept that many of the dismantled camps were too dangerous to tolerate.
The lease on the car park is for six months and during that time, officials will draw up an integration plan for each family.
“More long-term, the aim will be to absorb them into the system,” Chambon says.
When the group’s camp was dismantled, each migrant – all of whom are Romanian nationals – was offered a free flight home and €300 in cash per adult. Only two of the group accepted, but the others clubbed together and paid for the pair to return to France three days later. Few others were tempted to leave.
“It’s nothing,” scoffs Dorin Bote of the offer. “No thanks. I’m here 10 years. Take €300 and go back to Romania? After 10 years, this is my country now.”