Romanian President Traian Basescu on Thursday said Romania would cooperate with Italy to resolve the problem of Italy's gypsy camps.
Speaking after a meeting with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Basescu said Romania wants to create a ''shared plan'' to help free gypsies with Romanian citizenship living in Italian camps ''from the degrading state of poverty in which they find themselves''.
''We realise that we share the problem of the Roma (gypsy) minority, and we want to collaborate with the Italian government to resolve the problem, which we have been unable to do at home,'' Basescu said.
Berlusconi said Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni will fly to Bucharest next week to meet his Romanian counterpart in order to discuss how best to use European Union funding to aid the integration of Roma communities.
Basescu also defended Italy from international criticism that it was discriminating against Romanian citizens living in the country following a controversial census of gypsy camps.
''It's far from true that there has been negative behaviour towards the Romanian community in Italy,'' he said.
''The Italian government has put into effect simple safety measures to protect its citizens - not against Romanian citizens, but against people without correct identification papers.
''The Romanian state protects its citizens in whichever part of the world they find themselves, but we will never ask the authorities of another country to protect Romanian criminals,'' he added.
However, Basescu repeated that the Romanian government could not approve of any measures that contravened European Union discrimination laws.
''Romanian citizens have full rights as European Union citizens and should be treated as such,'' he said.
