“The European cannot take more time. This is urgent”, he said.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve arrive to attend Justice and Home Affairs Council following the attacks in Paris, at the European Council in Brussels, on November 20, 2015.
The 26-nation Schengen area is a passport-free zone, and normally only non-EU nationals have their details checked against a database for terrorism and crime when they enter, but those checks will now be extended to European Union citizens.
Ministers, nevertheless, weren’t anticipated to order any new measures which might be instantly introduced.
This article contains information from the Associated Press.
The Belgian capital was home to the suspected organizer of the November 13 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and Belgium has filed charges of “participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organization” against three suspects relating to the Paris attacks.
Germany said it was not enthusiastic about the idea and the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it received no formal proposals to that end, adding that any such discussions could be held on Friday.
“It was a big surprise when the intelligence came in”, one French police official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information was sensitive.
At Le Carillon, a note posted on the wall by the bar’s owners offered “profound condolences” to those who lost loved ones, thanked people for their support, and urged unity.
How and when Abaaoud entered France before his death remained unclear.
Abaaoud was one of Islamic State’s highest-profile European recruits, appearing in its slick online English-language magazine Dabiq, where he boasted of crossing European borders to stage attacks.
Prosecutors said on the day of Wednesday’s raid in Saint-Denis in the north of the capital that a woman had detonated an explosives vest and died.
Following a lengthy assault, police said the suspected plot ringleader and his female cousin both died in a hail of bullets and explosions.
It was initially thought that Aitboulahcen blew herself up during the gunfight, but Paris prosecutors said she was killed in the police raid but was not a suicide bomber. She was officially identified Friday as Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26. Identification of the third body was still in progress.
Cold rain extinguished the flickering candles and drenched the packets of flowers outside the Paris attacks sites Friday, but people came anyway – to pay tribute, to mourn, to reflect on their city’s losses one week later.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said: “We are here to show our French colleagues, and the French people, that we stand by them and that we are determined to make a tough, clear response”.
“We can’t say anything about the exact geographic situation of that individual”, he said. French police stopped Abdeslam the morning after Friday’s attack at the Belgian border but then let him go.
Abaaoud’s mangled body was identified on Thursday.
The reforms aim to defuse the furore unleashed by revelations that two of the attackers, including Abaaoud were able to slip back into Europe from Syria despite being the subject of worldwide arrest warrants. The ceremony will be at the gold-domed Hotel des Invalides, which houses the tomb of Napoleon.
In an ominous address – echoing the debate in the U.S. Congress after the September 11, 2001, attacks – French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said authorities must imagine that the grimmest threats are possible.
French artists and cultural figures are calling for people to mark a week since the start of the Paris attacks with an outpouring of “noise and light”.
The vote Friday in the Senate took place exactly one week since extremists attacked a concert hall, the stadium and several cafes and restaurants in Paris, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds.
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Police searched a mosque in Brest in western France.
