Europe needs to police its borders better if it is serious about fighting terrorism

Telegraph View: Gaps in intelligence and borders can prove fatal

A fraudulent Syrian refugee's passport  found near the body of one of the Paris bombers
A fraudulent Syrian refugee's passport found near the body of one of the Paris bombers

Sadiq Khan, Labour’s London mayoral contender, has warned that “too many” of his fellow British Muslims “grow up without really knowing anyone from a different background”. Mona Siddiqui, writing in our newspaper, also asks hard questions of the same community. It takes courage to say such things that political correctness discourages.

Europeans will only get to grips with terrorism if they embrace that variety of honest realism. That is why today’s EU summit on security must address the matter of border controls. That Britain stands outside Schengen has proved to be its blessing. David Cameron says that since 2010, 6,000 EU nationals have been denied access to the UK.

Nevertheless, Schengen poses a problem for everyone on the continent. The mastermind of the awful Paris attacks sneaked into the EU among Syrian refugees. He presumably then exploited the untrammelled freedom of movement offered by Schengen countries to reach his target. So it is no surprise that France now wishes to see stricter passport checks on the edges of the free-travel zone. The Dutch would like to break the zone up into more manageable chunks. What is clear is that the Schengen ideal will remain impractical as long as the EU’s external borders remain insecure. And, frankly, that is unlikely to change. Therefore, wise Europeans will undoubtedly want to reconsider Schengen, while Europe’s allied intelligence strategy is due an overhaul. Police have admitted that only 40 per cent of suspected foreign fighters who have undergone training in Syria and Iraq are named on a Europe-wide counter-terrorism database used by the UK. Such gaps in knowledge, like gaps in the border, can be deadly.