Europe stands by Schengen

By Tara Palmeri

In wake of foiled attack, the European Commission says freedom of movement is non-negotiable.

Friday’s foiled attack on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris has re-ignited longstanding concerns about Europe’s ability to prevent terrorist activity without internal border controls in the passport-free Schengen zone.
But despite calls from several political leaders to reconsider the Schengen agreement, which has thrown open the borders of 26 European countries, the Commission said Monday that option was off the table.

“Schengen is not negotiable and we have no intent to change that,” said Commission spokesman Christian Wigand at a press conference in Brussels.
As many look to the EU to do a better job of ensuring security in the region, the European Commission acknowledged Monday that it cannot do much except to play a facilitator role among its member countries in the counter-terrorism effort. The main instrument for this is Europol, which helps coordinate the work of national law-enforcement agencies to share information about terrorist networks.
Soon after the incident on the Thalys train in northern France, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called for a re-evaluation of the freedom of unchecked movement within the Schengen area, suggesting increased identity and baggage checks.
In standing by Schengen, Commission officials warned that member states can’t go as far as to enact border controls except in certain circumstances and only for limited periods of time. They added that there are other possibilities to increase security under the existing agreement.
“Schengen border code offers sufficient opportunities to enhance security tools and we encourage states to make full use of it,” Wigand said.
“There cannot be checks around border areas in each and every train all of the time, that would be clearly ruled out,” Wigand said. “[Police checks] cannot be the equivalent to border controls.”
Even before last week’s incident, stricter border controls had been high on the EU political agenda — with the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East entering Europe’s southern countries to seek refugee status in more economically prosperous countries like Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
At an emergency summit held in April to deal with the migration crisis, EU leaders agreed to create a new counter-terrorism center to improve sharing of information about terrorist activity across member states. Described as an FBI-light, the center within Europol can only help coordinate the exchange of information across borders, but it cannot make arrests.
“Member states are primarily responsible for security (they have police and security services) and the EU has only a coordinating/supportive role,” said Joaquín Nogueroles-García, a spokesman on counter-terrorism coordination for the EU Council of Ministers, in an e-mail to POLITICO.
The center has been set up to evaluate the dos and don’ts of preventing future attacks and to offer suggestions for practical ways to avoid them.
The challenge facing Europe’s counter-terrorism efforts was brought into sharp relief again in late June when a terrorist attack occurred in southern France during another EU summit at which leaders were discussing security issues. Again after that meeting, the member countries agreed to step up coordination. Last week’s attack showed how difficult that will be to achieve.
But security experts say that rather than spending money to beef up checkpoints at train stations, the EU should focus on preventive efforts to stop terrorist plots before they are carried out.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at think tank Carnegie Europe, who suggested that even if the Commission spends millions of euros on security equipment for one train line, terrorists can still shift their attention to other unguarded targets like metros or regional rail lines.
“The issue of course, is how can we better control terrorist networks,” Pierini said. “You have to do some of it at the EU level and some of it has to be at the national level because that’s the way that competences are shared, so it’s going to remain difficult.”