Europe has long been home to countless minority ethnic groups. But for the Roma, nearly a millennium on the European continent has failed to produce marked assimilation.

The Roma are thought to have immigrated to Europe from central India as early as the eleventh century. Commonly referred to as gypsies or Romani, the Roma quickly spread across all regions of Europe and today make up nearly ten percent of the population in southeastern European nations such as Romania and Bulgaria. Their arrival marked the beginning of centuries of extreme social ostracism and persecution, characterized by enslavement, forced labor, and extermination. Indeed, beside the Jewish people, the Roma were the only other ethnic group that the Nazis forced into death camps. Sixty-five years after World War II, many Roma continue to live isolated from mainstream European society, and congregate in impoverished group encampments on the outskirts of major cities.

France’s massive deportation of the Roma over the past year reveals that racial prejudices and policies of discrimination against the Roma persist, which only exacerbate the Roma’s fringe role in European society. However, French deportation policies also raise questions as to how members of the European Union should appropriately deal with sweeping social problems.

Since January, the French government has deported at least of 8,300 Roma, raising the number of Roma deportations in France to approximately 26,000 over the past three years. The vast majority of the deportees had immigrated from Romania and Bulgaria, giving them the right to free movement within the European Union and challenging the legality of French action.

President Nicolas Sarkozy justified the deportations by citing reasons of “public order,” insisting that France wanted to crack down on crime in all illegal encampments, regardless of ethnic affiliation. He claimed that only individuals with a history of criminal activity would be evacuated. However, the European Commission found it unlikely that France was truly evaluating the Roma on a case-by-case basis, and, in late August, began investigating what they suspected to be discriminatory deportation policies. On September 12, a document was released by the French Interior Ministry citing exactly what Sarkozy’s government spent weeks denying. The ministry had labeled the evacuation of Roma encampments as a “priority,” indicating the existence of an active government campaign against Roma immigrants in France.

When set against a backdrop of a recent stream of hate crimes, French action could easily be explained by an extreme hatred and prejudice that some Europeans still hold against the Roma. In the past year, six Roma have been murdered in Hungary without provocation, and, on August 30, a Slovakian Roma family was slaughtered when their neighbor burst into their apartment armed with a submachine gun. The Slovakian public’s reaction to the murder was perhaps even more disturbing than the crime itself. The New York Times described the national mood as ambivalent, insisting that while Slovaks clearly recognized the immorality of the shooting, they continue to view the Roma as delinquents who deserve to be punished.

While racially motivated stereotyping may have played a role in the French expulsion of the Roma, the larger issue at hand seems to be who should be held responsible for integrating the Roma into European society. According to France, the brunt of the burden should fall on the shoulders of the countries of which the Roma are citizens. Roma residing in Romania continue to have high rates of joblessness and illiteracy and, in a 2009 survey, one-fifth of Romanian Roma said they had been victims of a racially motivated hate crime. The French government has made clear that it is in favor of helping governments with large Roma populations fix their failed integration programs. In late August, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux met with Valentin Mocanu, Romanian Secretary of Roma integration, to discuss ways that Romania could improve employment opportunities and early childhood education.

However, many critics see these efforts as little more than halfhearted political posturing, especially in light of other EU states’ policies to actively integrate the Roma. Spain, which has also seen a significant influx of Roma immigration in the past five years, has taken steps to deal with the Roma’s social struggles within its own borders. In March of 2010, the Spanish government created a plan to spend over 100 million euros on programs aimed at improving the education, health, and lodging of Roma women and children. Funding for such programs can be obtained through the EU’s Integration Fund.

The Spanish initiative questions whether the failures of other EU member states’ policies truly warranted the deportation and displacement of thousands of people. The Roma have endured centuries of abuse, and their expulsion from France only reinforces public perception of them as a migrant social problem that should be eliminated instead of dealt with. In a European political environment characterized by the economic bailouts of countries such as Greece by fellow member states, collective problems seem to call for an end to blame-game politicking and a sober analysis of how each member state can manage the problem at hand.