French President Emmanuel Macron has stated that terrorism threat has become a new European reality and called on the European countries to come up with a coordinated and quick answer to it. Macron suggested that the Schengen Area must be reformed and that the EU needs to rethink the area's open border policy.
He clarified that while the EU wants to keep the Schengen borders open, it also wants them to be better protected. Macron added that it is the protection of the external borders that is at stake, not a limitation of the right to asylum, which in his opinion has been "misused".
The French president went on to speak in favour of establishing a European internal security council. Macron highlighted that the creation of "common databases", the exchange of information between European countries, and the "strengthening of criminal policies" should be among the measures implemented in response to the increasing terrorist attacks.
"We must reform Schengen so that it becomes a security space", Macron said.
His statements were partially echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who argued that countries need to know who enters and leaves the Schengen Area. The chancellor also stressed that a new entry-exit system is planned to be put in place at the Schengen Area’s external borders in 2022 to monitor the arrivals and the departures of non-Schengen residents and collect data on them, including biometric.
Merkel strongly condemned all kinds of religious hate and assured that European countries are not trying to set Islam against Christianity.
Europe Shaken by Terrorist Attacks
The statements on reforming the Schengen Area by Macron and Merkel come in the wake of three recent terror attacks that took place in France and Austria. The most recent incident occurred in Vienna, where a Daesh* member killed four people using firearms. The attack came mere weeks after three people were killed at the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice, France by a 21-year-old man of Tunisian origin using a 12-inch (30-centimetre) blade on 29 October. The man arrived in France days prior to the attack via the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The recent spate of terrorist attacks in Europe started with the beheading of French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October by 18-year-old Abdullah Anzorov. Before the attack, Paty had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, something that is considered blasphemous in Islam. The showing of the cartoons sparked condemnation from Muslim communities around the world and reportedly infuriated the Daesh terrorist group.
*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia
