The belief that France specifically targeted Roma during a recent crackdown on illegal migrants sparked a power struggle within the European Union on Thursday, as EU leaders met for a summit in Brussels. The summit saw French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso clash head-to-head and ended, as it began, with the possibility of EU legal action against the French state, dpa reported. "It is unacceptable for there to be any kind of discrimination of ethnic minorities. It is true that in the past few days and weeks, we have heard some things said that were out of order ... but there are issues of substance to look at," Barroso said after the meeting. "There was no discrimination at all," because the crackdown led to the arrests of far more French Roma than foreign ones, Sarkozy retorted in a simultaneous briefing in another part of the EU's headquarters. A prior lunchtime showdown between the two EU heavyweights was "quite lively", British premier David Cameron said, while his Bulgarian counterpart, Boyko Borisov, called it "serious." It also took EU leaders' attention away from an agenda that had been meant to focus on foreign policy and economic reform. "It wasn't formally on the agenda, but at the request of some delegations we did talk about the Roma problem," the EU's permanent summit chairman, Herman Van Rompuy, admitted. The row began on Saturday, when the French newspaper Le Parisien published leaked documents which appeared to show that France had deliberately targeted Roma for expulsion as part of a wider crackdown on illegal migrants, and then tried to hide the fact from the commission, the EU's executive. EU states are allowed to clear illegal migrant camps and expel individuals, but their policies can not be based on ethnic identity. That led EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding on Tuesday to warn France that she intended to launch legal action over the policy. Leaders at the summit recognised that as the commission's right. "The commission has both the right and duty to apply (EU rules), including the one on freedom of movement and non-discrimination," Van Rompuy said. But Reding, in an impassioned speech, had also said that she was "appalled" by the French policy and compared it indirectly with Nazi policies in World War II. That enraged Sarkozy. Questions on legal substance "are acceptable, but insults are unacceptable," the French leader insisted after the summit. That stance struck a chord with other EU leaders. "What was not comfortable for some member states and for the (French) president was the rhetoric and comparison with World War II ... Most of the leaders treated this as unacceptable," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said. The Lithuanian leader, formerly a commission member, said that the "emotional" clash had "clarified everything now." But it left Barroso as committed as ever to looking into the legality of the French policy, and Sarkozy defiant on his intention to carry on with the camp clearance policy - something that promises more clashes in the none too distant future. Formally, the summit discussed the EU's relationship with major foreign powers such as China, India and the United States. Van Rompuy said that leaders had agreed to take a more active role in steering overall EU foreign policy. However, "this is the beginning of a process," he underlined. Separately, EU foreign ministers, who also attended the summit, approved the signature of a ground-breaking free trade agreement with South Korea and called for urgent trade concessions for Pakistan in a bid to help the country recover from the recent disastrous floods. Diplomats said that Cameron and the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, pushed for more generous action, but that some other states resisted out of fears for their own domestic producers. The summit also issued a joint call to Israel to extend its freeze on settlement building in occupied Palestinian territory. The current freeze is due to expire on September 26.
