Brussels, 20/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Brussels on Friday 20 November to respond to the terrorist threat following the attacks in Paris of 13 November, which left 130 people dead, the home affairs ministers of the EU supported France in its calls for a targeted revision of the Schengen Borders Code, so that systematic checks can be carried out on European nationals on all of the external borders of the EU. Previously, such checks were not systematic for EU nationals.
The home affairs ministers also reiterated their call for the European Parliament to finalise, by the end of this year, the European PNR project obliging European airlines to collect data from their passengers and send these to the law enforcement services in the framework of the prevention of terrorism. Under a further priority, the ministers have undertaken immediately to take action on the Commission's proposals on firearms, which were presented on 18 November (see EUROPE 14333).
On checks on the external borders, the European ministers first of all called for the immediate step of all police forces on the borders of the EU applying the risk criteria issued following the Paris attacks of January 2015, allowing them to carry out checks, on the basis of police files such as the Schengen Information System (SIS) or Interpol databases, on all European nationals in order to identify possible foreign fighters. A revision of the Schengen Borders Code will then be necessary in order to make these checks on Europeans systematic and permanent at all points of entry on the external borders of the EU.
This revision needs to take place “by the end of the year”, the French home affairs minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said. In the conclusions, however, the ministers called for this targeted revision to take place in the framework of the Smart Borders package, which would be brought forward (it is currently scheduled for March 2016), but the Commission declined to give a precise timetable. Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos, supports this revision, but his services are uncertain about the date selected, one source referring to January, another stating December 2015 in the framework of the package on the European border guards.
No specific decision concerns the free-movement zone in itself, but Cazeneuve nonetheless warned his colleagues that controls on the internal borders, which have been brought back in France in the framework of COP 21 and following the attacks of 13 November, will be maintained “for as long as the terrorist threat makes this necessary”. The debate on the health of the Schengen zone will be held at the forthcoming Council of 3 and 4 December.
On the European PNR project, the ministers reiterated that they supported a directive which also includes intra-European flights and allows unmasked data to be held for at least a year, as opposed to the 30 days proposed by the European Parliament's committee on civil liberties in July. “It is not serious”, Cazeneuve commented after this extraordinary meeting. According to one source, at the most recent trialogue on 17 November, the Parliament moved closer to the position of the Council and a compromise would appear to have emerged on this one-year period. However, the ministers also call upon the Parliament to agree for the European passenger name records (PNR) also to cover national crimes, not just trans-national crimes, as the Parliament requested in July.
Further support to the demands made by Paris came in the form of a warm welcome from the ministers to the proposals presented by the European Commission on 18 November to tighten up the rules on decommissioning firearms and to review the directive on firearms. On the same day, the Commission also announced that France will have an action plan to tackle the trafficking in firearms from the Balkan states in particular by the end of the year.
Systematic controls on migrants and reducing flows. Other decisions were made on 20 November, for instance concerning the arrival in the EU of migrants who should also be systematically checked on the basis of SIS files or other databases in all hotspots. “The decisions on relocation must not be called into question”, said Cazeneuve. All migrants, therefore, must be checked on the basis of the SIS or VIS (visas) systems and the member states of first entry may be assisted in this task by Frontex. Work will also be needed to “reduce incoming flows from Turkey”, he explained. Talks between the EU and Turkey on the common action plan are proving difficult.
In order to plug these “blatant gaps”, Cazeneuve said, the member states must also make every effort to exchange more information amongst themselves and feed more information into the Schengen Information System database. In particular, they must feed into SIS2 on foreign fighters and increase their use of the Prüm tool, which allows access to national DNA and digital fingerprint files. Among the other measures decided on, the financial intelligence cells will be stepped up in identifying the financing of terrorism, and the Commission has also been called upon to make proposals to this effect at the earliest opportunity.
Lastly, the justice ministers emphasised the de-radicalisation and disindoctrination work, as French minister of justice Christiane Taubira stressed. Adequate financial resources will also be provided to accompany this work. The work of joint teams, particularly Franco-Belgian teams, will be consolidated. The European Criminal Records Information System, ECRIS, will also be extended to third-country nationals. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)