Announced last month by the French president and his ministers, the decision to dismantle Gypsy camps will see some 700 people with Romanian passports sent back to the country by the end of August. A first batch of 79 travellers is due to arrive in Bucharest today; another 131 have been sent to Timisoara.So far, the returns are “voluntary”, meaning that each adult who opts to board a plane has received €300 ($385), along with €100 for each of their children. Acknowledging that they will not be able to stop the Roma from coming straight back, French officials have taken fingerprints in order to make sure such returnees do not receive any more handouts.
As this is going on, Greece has now become the go-to place for undocumented immigrants to enter the EU.
Greece has found itself on the sharp end of Europe’s illegal-immigration problem largely because its “competitors” have found ways of stemming the flow. Until 2007 most of the influx was shared between Greece, Italy and Spain. But bilateral deals, such as Italy’s with Libya and Spain’s with Senegal and Mauritania, have largely closed down the western and central Mediterranean routes into the EU. Greek attempts to negotiate a similar agreement with Turkey have stalled.
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