(CNN) -- The European Commission is looking into France's expulsion of more than 8,000 ethnic Roma, commonly referred to as gypsies, the commission's president told CNN Tuesday.
"The European Commission, working with the French authorities, is now making an independent assessment" of the situation, Jose Manuel Barroso said on CNN's "Quest Means Business".
Recent raids against camps in Lyon, France, and other cities forced out a total of 8,300 Romanian and Bulgarian nationals of Roma origin. Close to 10,000 were expelled in 2009.
Barroso said in his first state of the union speech on Tuesday that governments "must respect human rights".
That wasn't specifically aimed at France, he told CNN, though he noted that France is in the middle of a "very politicized debate".
"I do not want to interfere in that debate," he said, but he added that the commission is investigating how France is implementing European law.
The European Commission is the executive arm of the European Union.
CNN
