Dutch consider mini-Schengen zone to cut refugee influx

Europe’s open borders were already under strain from the refugee crisis.

All European Union citizens would face much tighter and systematic ID checks when leaving or entering Europe’s 26-country free-travel area, under new demands France is making of its European Union partners following the terror attacks in Paris.

A few have directly connected the refugee crisis with the events in Paris. “Those who organized these attacks and those who carried them out are exactly those who the refugees are fleeing, and not the opposite”, he said.

Certainly in Germany, mainstream parties and politicians have resisted linking refugees to the Paris attacks.

“It is necessary, in particular to address the security issues which the Paris attacks have again highlighted, that we adopt effective, secure and urgent measures to better control our external borders”, the French document said.

A few of the jihadists returning from Syria are French or Belgian citizens with legitimate passports. Any evidence that militants were using the refugee columns as a few kind of cover to get to Europe would be a serious development in Germany.

As debate raged about the failings that had let Abaaoud slip through the net, Valls urged France’s neighbours to “play their role properly”, saying the whole Schengen system would be “called into question… if Europe does not take responsibility” for its borders. Finland’s Interior Minister Petteri Orpo said: “Tens of thousands of people were coming into Europe and they are not being registered”.

Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe think tank, said in a media briefing Thursday that the Paris attackers had struck in a way that deliberately puts European migration and asylum policies under more stress.

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, France and the European Commission are pushing for intensified measures on fighting terrorism and radicalisation as well as on border controls and arms regulations.

“Our political goal must be that the Schengen area as a whole functions”, he said.

Ministers also plan to discuss other security measures at Friday’s meeting. It has repeatedly called for a proportionate distribution of migrants across the 28 member states of the European Union but countries in the east, including Hungary and Poland, have refused. Those four are: Iceland and Norway (since 2001), Switzerland (since 2008) and Liechtenstein (since 2011).

Under the plan, a borderless territory of Austria, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands would be formed.

In a paper the Centre for European Reform argued that: “Europe should not dismantle Schengen, but improve it, by processing refugees more effectively, deploying many more border guards at Europe’s outer borders and improving sharing intelligence among the member states”. Austria is planning one on its border with Slovenia. The Netherlands wants a “mini-Schengen” to introduce passport checks at the borders of several Western European states.

Belgium-born Abdeslam Salah is described by officials as “dangerous”.