Amidst its controversial campaign to deport Roma squatters back to Bulgaria and Romania, France is going to ask the latter to come up with an emergency integration plan for the Roma minority.

This has been announced by French State Secretary on EU affairs, Pierre Lellouche, in Bucharest on Thursday, right before talks between the governments of France and Romania on the Roma issue in Bucharest, as cited by BGNES.

The high-level French state delegation to the Romanian capital is led by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson. He himself announced the visit on Monday during a much anticipated immigration summit of several EU countries in Paris which made no formal mention of the Roma issue.

In his remarks, Lellouche said the French government will also ask the Romanians to provide all-out police and justice cooperation with respect to fighting human trafficking. The emergency national Roma integration plan that France will asking Romania to develop should be for 2010-2013. 

According to the French official, Romania will be able to utilize about EUR 1 B in order to implement such a plan.

Right ahead of the visit of the French delegation to Bucharest Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi published an article in Thursday's issue of the Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei arguing for the development of an EU-wide strategy for resolving the Roma issue.

On Monday, a day before the EP debate on the issue, a much expected immigration summit of several EU countries and Canada in Paris made no mention of the recent campaign of the French government to crack down on Roma immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania.

At a news conference after the summit, however, French Immigration Minister Eric Besson practically denied the existence of a "Roma deportation".

As French Immigration Minister Besson made it clear after the Paris Summit on Monday, the French government time and again demonstrated it is reluctant to style its actions as "deportation", saying that Roma people are leaving the country by mutual agreement and for a compensation (EUR 300 per adult, EUR 100 per child), and also retain the right to return whenever they might wish.

At the beginning of August, France began a high-profile campaign of dismantling large numbers of illegal Roma camps in a move announced by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The mass expulsions have drawn criticism from the international community, the Vatican and the UN. During the past week, European Commission also criticized France saying it did not put enough emphasis on individual circumstances.

Sarkozy also faces opposition from his own cabinet with Prime Minister Francois Fillon hinting he disliked the crude links being made between foreigners and crime, while Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he considered resigning over the issue.

The deportations saw 1 000 Roma returned to Romania and Bulgaria last month while 11 000 were expelled from France last year, according to BBC.

France insists the deportations are not contradicting EU laws, including the free movement of people.

Under EU rules, the State can expel people who have been in the country for at least three months without a job and/or are deemed to be a threat to public security.

On Tuesday, the Roma deportation issue led to heated debates in the European Parliament but to no formal criticism of France on part of the European Commission.