On Wednesday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy will hold a long awaited meeting, in the Elysée palace, on the situation of the gens de voyage, more popularly known as gitanes or gypsies, and the Roma population. Last week, police shot and killed one gypsy in Grenoble, leading to riots in the city. Earlier on, some 200 Roma people were expelled from their makeshift houses in the Parisian suburb of Saint Denis. The meeting became an immediate focus of criticism. Initially the president had called it a meeting to "discuss problems caused by certain people among Gypsies and Roma people", but opposition parties were quick to point out that he was 'stigmatising' whole populations.