European Union to overhaul passport-free zone after Paris attacks

As the siege was unfolding, the European Union agreed to rush through reforms to the passport-free Schengen zone to address growing concerns about border security in the wake of last week’s attacks on a Paris sporting venue and entertainment spots.

Under grey skies and rain, Paris is marking a week since the deadly attacks with silence and reflection.

French Justice Minister Christine Taubira, who was at the crisis meeting, called for greater joint efforts to fight recruitment by the Islamic State group, calling it a “monstrosity which has huge resources”.

EU’s border control agency Frontex and EU’s law enforcement agency Europol are expected to help member states bordering the Western Balkans region to detect smuggling of firearms and to enhance cooperation with countries in the region. However Parisians spontaneously came collectively outside the restaurants, cafes & concert hall hit within the assaults – as they’ve all week – to go away flowers, light candles or hold quiet vigils.

Bouquets were laid at the Place de la Republique, lit by the flames of hundreds of candles, and in Parisian style people opened bottles of wine on the street to toast those who died in the massacres.

With France under a state of emergency, most demonstrations and large gatherings have been banned in Paris since the November 13 attacks.

He added the members also agreed to “considerably strengthen” means to cooperate to combat extremism.

The passport was found next to the body of a suicide bomber at the French national stadium and investigators are trying to ascertain whether it was genuine.

The ministers pledged to “implement immediately” previously agreed controls on people exiting and entering Europe’s border-free Schengen area.

However, the European Union was warned by three United Nations agencies that a sudden tightening of controls along the refugee route through the Balkans would worsen an increasingly untenable situation, stranding many people outdoors amid plunging temperatures.

The Home Secretary said there also needed to be “immediate progress” on obtaining access to passenger name records.

Of the more than 350 people wounded in the attack, scores are in critical condition.

Morocco’s king is in France and met French President Francois Hollande on Friday.

The Islamic State jihadist suspected of orchestrating the Paris attacks was killed in a major police raid in the French capital, prosecutors confirmed, raising troubling questions about a breakdown in intelligence and European border security.

France’s national police chief says that the whereabouts of a key fugitive in last week’s Paris attacks is unclear.

A week after the Paris attacks, French nationals were in the firing line again in Mali when Islamist militants stormed a hotel in the capital Bamako leaving at least 27 people dead.

The move follows the revelation that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian terrorist said to have planned the Paris attacks, slipped back into Europe undetected after first fleeing to join foreign jihadi fighters in Syria.

The European Commission, the EU executive, earlier in the week proposed tighter rules for the production and sale of deactivated weapons after evidence emerged that they may have been used in the Paris attacks in January and November. His suicide-bomber brother Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up at a cafe without killing anyone.

A European Parliament committee chairman said he believes that the EU can finally seal a deal by the end of next month on sharing air passenger information.

Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said the decision to raise the threat alert to its highest setting was taken “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris… where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time”.