Europe must have stronger borders

Not for the first time, world leaders are meeting in the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity in the heart of a major European capital. In July 2005, the G8 summit was under way in Gleneagles when news came of the bomb attacks on the London transport network. On Sunday, the leaders of the G20 gathered in Turkey for talks that have inevitably been dominated by the massacre in Paris.

In 2005, as now, the rest of the world united behind the country targeted by the bombers. Tony Blair said they “will not prevail”, just as French president François Hollande now promises a merciless campaign against the Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for the attack and increases his airstrikes against them.

But the biggest shock in 2005 was to discover that the bombers in London were actually British citizens and had not been flown in from overseas to kill and maim, even if they had been trained abroad by al-Qaeda.

It is now apparent that some of the Paris gang are French of Algerian descent who probably went to Syria, where they were not so much radicalised as brutalised. This has profound implications for those who leave their country to join Isil and then wish to return home: could they be made to forfeit their citizenship when they leave?

Others involved may have entered Europe along with the mass of migrants making their way from the Middle East and further afield. To the concerns that such a large number of incomers will have a massive impact on social cohesion and economic infrastructure in ill-prepared EU reception countries must now be added the fear that this migration also brings security dangers.

A particular cause for worry is the borderless Schengen area in Europe. This, initially, enabled freedom of movement and added to the impression that a single political entity was being forged. But the concept of ridding the EU of its internal frontiers predated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of militant Islamism. Both these developments over the past 25 years have made the idealism which underpinned Schengen look particularly naïve. Faced now with great movements of people into and across Europe, it may even be unsustainable.

For after Paris, who is still arguing for free movement within Europe? Certainly not the French, who yesterday, added their voice to the calls for the reinstatement of internal borders. Nor the Poles, who are also refusing to share in the migrant quota system being foisted upon them. Nor even the generous Swedes, who have reintroduced border controls. The gates are closing, as member states try to prevent other EU countries from passing migrants on to them.

The best response would be to strengthen the external frontier of the EU to stop people coming in other than through controlled migration routes. It is fortuitous, then, that the G20 is taking place in Turkey since it is here that part of the problem lies. The refugees from Syria, and migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, are using this route into the EU via Greece. Others from North and sub-Saharan Africa are coming through Libya. The latter is a failed state but Turkey is not. The authorities there have stood by while thousands of migrants have crammed on to boats to make the perilous journey to Europe. This must stop.

One day, the aim should be for the Syrians to return to their country. But that will require a political settlement that is impossible to achieve while the West insists that it cannot involve Bashar al Assad. Yet his enemy and that of his principal ally, Russia (another recent victim of terror), is the same as ours, namely Isil. Indeed so serious is the situation that President Obama and Vladimir Putin put recent tensions aside to meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit to discuss Syrian conflict resolution and dealing with Isil. For until the death cult is defeated, there will be no peace in the region.

This does, of course, have consequences for Western foreign policy: there is no appetite, even after Paris, for another major military incursion into the Middle East by countries seared by the experience in Iraq. Yet only by being confronted on the ground can Isil be beaten, as the Kurds and the Russians have shown. But mobilising regional forces is difficult because of the historic sectarian enmities that fuelled the rise of Islamist jihadism.

The implications for the EU of the Paris massacre are far-reaching, even if some administrators such as Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, appear to be in denial. He said that Paris “changes nothing” and in so far as the migration crisis still has to be dealt with he is right.

But the EU elites are desperate to shore up the Schengen area, because if it collapses, then so does one of the key pillars of the post-Maastricht Union. The only way to stop that happening is to turn the EU into a fortress. After Paris there may be little option. But as we found in London 10 years ago, the enemy is not always outside the border.