Francesco Rutelli, Democratic candidate for Rome City Hall: "I will adopt zero tolerance for bad Romanians"

Miercuri, 26 martie 2008, 14:46 English | Regional Europe

Francesco Rutelli, the Democrat Party nominee as candidate for the Rome City Hall, declared during his campaign that he will adopt a zero tolerance policy for the bad immigrants, explicitly pointing at Romanian: "I will not be good to bad Romanians".

The statement about Romanians was made while meeting the citizens in one of Rome's districts, Esquilino, and was quoted on Wednesday by Corriere della Sera. Esquilino is one of the districts with a massive presence of immigrants.

It is the fault of the past governments that there are too many Romanians in Rome, said Rutelli in another meeting with the electors. “Rome became a desirable city, but it also became a city where tens of thousands of immigrants arrived, 141,000 of them being Romanians. We ask ourselves: how many of them are honest people?”.

Fighting the "made in Romania" crime has become the main electoral theme for the right-wing politicians as well. On March 18, Franco Frattini, former vice president of the European Commission, used the same words when it came to Romanians.