The European Commission and French officials are due to meet next week to discuss Roma integration policies, the European Union's executive announced Friday, signaling that tensions between the two sides were subsiding, dpa reported.
Earlier this week, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding criticized France, saying she was following "with great attention and some concern" its controversial decision to repatriate hundreds of non-registered ethnic Romas to Romania and Bulgaria.
But in a telephone conversation on Thursday, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told the EU executive's boss, Jose Manuel Barroso, that the expulsions "fully complied with EU law," commission spokesman Olivier Bailly said.
Tuesday's meeting, agreed during the call, is scheduled to take place in Brussels a day before Reding is to report to fellow EU commissioners on the legality of French actions.
But Reding's much anticipated assessment is not going to be made public, her spokesman Matthew Newman said Friday. He explained it would be an internal "legal and political analysis," also covering issues related to the Roma population at large.
"It is something that will stay within the commission," he told reporters.
On Tuesday, France is set to be represented by an as-yet unspecified ministerial delegation, while on the commission's side Reding may be joined by her Home Affairs and Social Affairs counterparts, Cecilia Malmstroem and Laszlo Andor, Bailly said.
The French crackdown on Roma, while backed by a fellow right-wing government in Italy, has caused consternation elsewhere in Europe, with criticism coming from non-governmental groups, officials in Romania and even the Catholic Church.
On Friday, the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva joined the list, urging France to stop mass deportations of Romas.
In Rome, the Vatican's top official for migrants, Monsignor Agostino Marchetto, told French religious news agency I.MEDIA that the Catholic Church was concerned about the Romas because "they were also victims of a holocaust and have always lived fleeing those who chase them."
The French Foreign Ministry reacted in a statement, insisting that the country "scrupulously respects EU law as well as its international commitments on human rights."
In a further sign of decreasing tensions between Paris and Brussels, Bailly said that Malmstroem was invited to an immigration summit in Paris on September 6, from which the commission had been originally excluded from.
The Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said last week he wanted to use the meeting to call for a change in EU immigration laws, making it easier to expel irregular Roma people carrying EU passports.
But French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, hosting the talks, said Wednesday "nothing in the agenda ... is specifically covering a specific nationality or ethnic community."
The reassurance was enough for the Belgian presidency of the EU, which had threatened to boycott the Paris meering if Romas were explicitly targeted. A diplomat said the Belgian State Secretary for Migration and Asylum, Melchior Wathelet, is now going to attend.
The talks, involving the EU's "big five" - France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain - are also expected to include officials from Greece, Canada and the United States