“All of this is particularly disappointing because, obviously, the approach taken by the administration of the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, had enormous implications in terms of human rights violations,” said Tara Bedard, programs director at the European Roma Rights Center.

Rita Izsak, the United Nations independent expert on minority issues, said in a statement that “the Roma are European Union citizens and Europe’s most marginalized minority.” She deplored the “discriminatory treatment” that they continue to receive in France.

Spread among several hundred illegal encampments, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 foreign Roma reside in France, a number that has not varied much since the fall of the Iron Curtain. When deported, they often return, fleeing discrimination and poverty in Romania and Bulgaria.

Polling suggests that the expulsions are overwhelmingly popular with the French electorate, including with Mr. Hollande’s constituents on the left, and the president is eager to counter accusations from the right that the Socialists are soft on crime.

“The left in power is not just about indignation, it’s about acting, it’s about acting against these camps,” the interior minister, Manuel Valls, told the radio station France Inter. Court orders for the demolitions, typically requested by local officials concerned about the crime and the begging that emanate from the camps, will be carried out, Mr. Valls said. But he pledged that “insertion measures” would be “progressively” applied.

“It’s this, a politics of the left,” he said. “It’s, at once, enforcing the law, and at the same time making sure that integration, justice — through schooling, through training, through work — become realities.” In a directive published this week, the government asked officials across the country to propose solutions for Roma when possible, and announced that it would be studying successful local initiatives.