Stop Roma purge, MEPs demand

The demand was made in a non-binding resolution on Thursday backed by 337 MEPs meeting in Strasbourg, with 245 opposed and 51 abstentions.

But the Sarkozy administration dismissed the resolution as "a political measure" and insisted that the discriminatory practice would continue.

The vote united leftwingers, Greens and liberals in a grand coalition against the European People's Party, which includes Mr Sarkozy's UMP.

The resolution expressed "deep concern" at the measures taken by the French authorities and other member states who were targeting the Roma and urged them to suspend all expulsions "immediately"

MPs also condemned the "inflammatory and openly discriminatory rhetoric that has characterised political discourse" in France, where more than 100 Roma camps have been destroyed and 1,000 Roma people expelled, mostly to Romania and Bulgaria.

The resolution also criticised the persecution of the oppressed minority by other member states, evidenced only this week by the destruction of Roma settlements around Milan and Rome in Italy.

And it criticised the European Commission as the guardian of the EU treaty because it had not made "a strong, quick response" when the expulsions first started.

While discrimination against national or ethnic groups is forbidden under EU law, London Green MEP Jean Lambert stressed that the French policy of mass expulsions of Roma people was precisely that.

"It is not saying you have committed a crime and therefore you as an individual should be expelled from this country," Ms Lambert said. "It really is state discrimination of a group, which is already one of the most disadvantaged in the European Union."

But French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, in Bucharest for talks with Romanian officials on the issue, claimed that there was no "specific targeting" of Roma and no "collective expulsions" by France.

"France will continue to repatriate illegal foreigners to their country of origin," Mr Besson made clear.

nFrench police raided Mr Sarkozy's UMP party headquarters this week as they probed deeper into the scandal around political donations and the financial affairs of Europe's richest woman.

They were seeking a letter sent in 2007 by Labour Minister Eric Woerth, at the time UMP party treasurer, to then interior minister Sarkozy. It is believed to have backed the granting of a national award to a man who was wealth manager for L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt - and who also employed Mr Woerth's wife.