France
demands tighter border controls in EU free travel area
Alex Barker and
Duncan Robinson in Brussels
November 19, 2015
8:36 pm
France is demanding
that Brussels and the European Parliament “get a grip” on the
security threats facing the bloc by allowing tighter border checks
and removing barriers to sharing airline passenger data.
EU home affairs
ministers meeting in Brussels on Friday are preparing to reprise a
series of demands — first made after January’s Charlie Hebdo
attacks in Paris — to close perceived loopholes and gaps in the
passport-free Schengen zone’s security arrangements.
This includes
calling on the European Commission to propose rule changes to allow
for EU citizens entering the Schengen area to be systematically
registered — a measure not presently permitted.
Bernard Cazeneuve,
French interior minister, hit out at the EU’s lack of action,
saying the bloc must “shape up” and regroup in the face of an
organised terror threat following Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks
in Paris .
Most politically
sensitive is the push to conclude the fraught eight-year debate over
whether so-called passenger name record data, stored during flight
bookings within the EU, can be shared with law enforcement agencies.
It is a touchstone issue for liberal MEPs, who fear the system could
be misused to discriminate against minorities.
EU officials
involved in the negotiations said that talks with the parliament had
borne fruit in recent days, with one official saying they “made us
quite confident we will reach agreement by the end of the year”.
In the wake of the
Paris attacks, the issue has become highly politicised in Brussels,
with Monika Hohlmeier, a German Christian Democrat and leader of the
parliament’s home affairs committee, accusing left-leaning parties
of “inviting terrorists to use loopholes in our safety and security
legislation in order to perpetrate other terror attacks”.
“For them there is
no lesson to be drawn from the Paris attacks,” Ms Hohlmeier said of
the parliament’s mainstream centre-left and liberal groups. “The
movements of terrorists have to be monitored.”
The calls to tighten
Schengen security rules come against the backdrop of a more
far-reaching debate between member states, as they respond to acute
pressures from the migration crisis.
In a sign of the
drastic measures under consideration, the Netherlands has informally
raised the idea of shrinking the zone to a “mini-Schengen”, which
would reintroduce border checks around a core of western EU member
states.
Thomas de Maizière,
Germany’s interior minister, dismissed the Dutch idea on Thursday.
“Our political goal must be that the Schengen area as a whole
functions,” he said. “Everything else would just be
considerations.”
The commission has
been loath to discuss serious amendments to the code governing the
Schengen zone. Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU home affairs commissioner,
said on Wednesday that Schengen was “not the problem” if its
tools for security were put to full use.
The reforms of
border rules backed by EU ministers involve a relatively surgical
change, but reopening the code would raise the risk of it turning
into a more fundamental overhaul.
At present, member
states have co-ordinated an approach to “unsystematic” checks on
EU citizens entering the Schengen area. However, blanket registration
of the kind security officials are calling for would need amendments
to the travel-zone’s code.
Draft conclusions
for Friday’s Brussels home affairs ministers meeting also call for
more rigorous use of law enforcement databases and better
intelligence sharing, and seek the creation of specific mechanisms to
track the movements of foreign fighters returning from Syria.
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