EU ministers agree on tougher border and airline controls

EU countries have agreed plans for an airline passenger name registry, a clampdown on arms trafficking and tougher controls at external borders, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Friday.

Speaking at a meeting with his European counterparts in Brussels, Mr Cazeneuve said France had won backing on the three points Paris eagerly wanted to be addressed.

“We have taken strong, operational decisions with results that have to come about before the end of the year,” Mr Cazeneuve said on French television from Brussels.

Mr Cazeneuve asked for the crisis meeting after the attack in Paris last Friday in which Islamic State radicals with ties to Syria and a planning cell based in Belgium killed 129 people across the city.

"We must be implacable in our determination, we must speed up our action, otherwise Europe will lose its way," he said after the 28 governments agreed to speed new legislation to share air passengers' data, curb firearms trafficking and ensure closer checks on EU citizens crossing Europe's external borders.

“We need to act firmly, we need to act swiftly and with force,” Mr Cazeneuve said after the Luxembourg minister who chaired the meeting confirmed the formal approval of an agreement reached among officials earlier in the week.

The draft conclusions included agreement to “implement immediately the necessary systematic and coordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement”.

Citizens of the 26 Schengen countries have their documents visually checked by security forces when they leave or enter the area. The new proposal is likely to upgrade the controls so documents are systematically checked against criminal and security databases.

Some of the Belgian and French suspects involved in the Paris attacks had travelled to fight in Syria and returned, apparently undetected, to Europe. Officials have said some may have taken advantage of the large influx of refugees from Syria over the summer to evade normal border controls.

The EU agency for border controls, Frontex, is to get a stronger mandate to contribute to the fight against terrorism.

Solidarity

German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said before the meeting: “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.”

He said it was vital that Europe’s national security services do more to share information, something echoed by his Italian counterpart.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner for internal affairs and migration, said the EU executive would propose a common “European intelligence agency”. But questioned after the meeting, he made clear it was a distant prospect.

"It is an ideal idea," he said, arguing that it would best serve the European Union and that the Commission had started examining the possibilities. "But it is not on the table right now," he added, noting that it was more pressing to improve the level of intelligence sharing among member states.

It is an idea that has been floated by some politicians but which others have said may be a step too far for many governments, whose sovereignty over national security issues is enshrined in EU treaties.

Europol, the EU police cooperation agency, is increasing its work in distributing shared counter-terrorism intelligence and has urged governments to engage. Ministers also agreed to press for a deal by the end of the year on sharing airline travellers' data, the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) programme, which has long been stalled in the European Parliament over concerns for privacy.