The leaders of France, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands – Emmanuel Macron, Sebastian Kurz, Angela Merkel and Mark Rutte – drew the outlines of their response to terrorism, particularly Islamist terrorism, during a videoconference on Tuesday 10 November, following the series of attacks in France, Austria and also in October in Dresden, Germany.
The Interior Ministers of the EU27 will be instructed to put this reply in writing on 13 November. In the presence of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, these officials felt that this response required both the implementation of new legislation adopted in the wake of the attacks of 2015 and 2016 (such as the entry/exit system, which will make it possible to monitor the movement of people entering and leaving the Schengen area, or the systematic control of all nationals, including European citizens, at the EU’s external borders), by overhauling the Schengen area to strengthen external borders or by stepping up the fight against online violence and extremism, with leaders calling on the co-legislators to quickly conclude work on removing online terrorist content.
Mr Kurz and Ms Merkel also addressed the issue of training imams on their territory and the financing of organisations, especially from abroad.
Mr Michel confirmed that these issues would be put on the agenda of the December Summit, which is partly devoted to the issue of terrorism.
Mr Rutte, for his part, stressed that Europeans must defend their fundamental freedoms, freedom of expression, but recalled, as did Ms Merkel, that this is not a war between Islam and Christianity nor policies against Muslims, judging it “unfortunate that groups can be singled out”.
The German Chancellor also insisted on dialogue with Muslim countries to strengthen this response to terrorism and on the importance of providing a “social” response to the phenomenon and not just a criminal or judicial one.
Regarding Schengen, Mr Macron confirmed that only the external borders would be affected. Proposals will be sent “in the coming weeks” to the European partners for discussion in December.
However, the French president also referred to the ‘Pact on Asylum and Migration’, which contains proposals to strengthen the identification of migrants when they arrive in the EU.
While arguing against the conflation of “irregular immigration and terrorism”, he called for “lucidity” on certain flaws in the control of irregular immigration.
The President of the Commission, for her part, recalled that her institution would be launching new projects such as the reform of Europol and, to combat online hate, the directive on digital services at the beginning of December.
She also considered that there was a need to improve the implementation of existing legislation, such as systematic external border controls, which are not universally applied, and legislation on firearms. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)