France put around 80 Gypsies on flights to Romania this week as the government ratcheted up a controversial law-and-order campaign, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The French government had planned to send 93 Gypsies, or Roma, back to Romania on Thursday, but at least 18 didn't turn up for their flights, officials said.

The expulsions come amid French concerns over how to deal with mobile populations in the expanded version of the European Union. Over the past decade, Central and East European countries including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, whose populations are generally poorer than West Europeans, have joined the EU. Most of Europe's estimated 11 million Gypsies live in the east. The EU guarantees freedom of movement to citizens of member states, but only on condition that they can support themselves.

France has been expelling foreign Gypsies for the past few years—an estimated 12,000 were deported in 2009, according to Alexandre Le Clève, a spokesman for advocacy group Rom Europe. There have been 25 rounds of expulsions already this year, according to the Interior Ministry, which didn't give the total number of people involved.

Read the entire story at wsj.com