In some countries, as few as 1% of people entering the European Union get checked against the Schengen Information System (SIS) anti-terror watch list, and the average is 10-20%, according to The Telegraph.
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“It is hard to see how signatories to the Schengen Agreement can retain open internal borders until they have greater confidence in their surveillance and intelligence-sharing and have established greater control over the EU’s external borders”, he wrote.
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. “We are talking with like-minded countries regularly”. After the attacks in Paris there are increasing doubts about whether they can survive without being reinforced. After the Paris attacks Poland’s minister of European affairs declared that the EU’s deal to redistribute asylum-seekers was off. Slovakia’s election campaign has become an anti-migrant shouting match. “We don’t know who they are”.
Calls to curb borderless travel were already growing louder in August after Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan national, carried an assault rifle across two borders on a Thalys train before attacking fellow passengers. As investigators retrace the movements of the terrorists and their weapons, more intra-European links will surely be uncovered, and more of Schengen’s weaknesses.
“But for the future we have to change article seven of the Schengen border code in order to do systematic checks on everyone”, he said.
After months of strain on European borders from refugees fleeing war-torn countries, and in the wake of the attacks on Paris, the decades-old agreement that has allowed people to move freely across 26 European countries may be permanently dismantled. Those four are: Iceland and Norway (since 2001), Switzerland (since 2008) and Liechtenstein (since 2011).
Schengen took effect in 1995, the first members being: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The overwhelming scale of migrant arrivals led several countries, including Hungary, Slovenia, and ultimately Germany and Austria, temporarily to reintroduce border controls. Austria has similarly fenced off its border with Slovenia.
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.
What you hear repeatedly from European officials and politicians is this: if the EU’s external borders can not be fixed then the Schengen zone can not survive.
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One senior official in Brussels described it as a race against time. If the popular sentiment turns against Schengen, moderate governments – or, after the next electoral cycle, nationalist governments – could withdraw from the agreement. What is more likely in the weeks ahead is that countries in the Schengen zone quietly begin reinforcing their national borders.
