GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th November, 2020) The principle of free movement within the Schengen area should be re-discussed in order to introduce a restricted mode for emergency situations, like those related to the pandemic or terrorism, Marco Lombardi, the director of the Italian Team for Security Terroristic Issues and Managing Emergencies (ITSTIME), told Sputnik in an interview.
Following the terrorist attack in Nice in late October, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the Schengen agreement needed revision in order to strengthen the police presence at the borders and enhance the fight against illegal immigration and trafficking networks that are increasingly linked to terrorist networks.
The 21-year-old Tunisian man who stabbed dead three people in the Notre-Dame church in Nice on October 29, Brahim Aoussaoui, arrived from Tunisia on the Italian island of Lampedusa in September along with other migrants. On October 9, he was ordered to leave the country, since he had no right to refuge. However, he managed to not only stay in the country but also to move across the whole territory of Italy and reach France.
"Finally there is a voice that is raised correctly against the Islamism that is intolerable in this form. I agree that in an emergency situation, like that of the pandemic, for example, the Schengen borders should be re-discussed. Because that is what is happening already. In Italy, we have banned the circulation between the red regions. It can also be done between the European countries, depending on the development of the pandemic," Lombardi, who is also codirector of the National Observatory on Radicalization and Counter Terrorism (ReaCT) and a member of the Governmental Commission on Counter Radicalization and of the Strategic Policy Committee of the Italian foreign ministry, said.
He stressed that such restrictions would be good as an emergency mode that is introduced during certain periods when there is a need for containment.
"However, this can be done in my opinion not as a general principle, but as the way of governing of some emergency which at this particular historical moment requires particular attention in certain geographical areas," he continued.
Last week, Macron organized a summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte under the auspices of the European Council focusing on the latest attacks in France and Austria. At the summit, Macron called for the strengthening of the external borders of the European Union and the renewal of governance of this space. He reiterated his previous proposal to create an Internal Security Council. Kurz and Rutte said that the EU needed to efficiently protect its external borders to keep the Schengen system alive.
On November 13, a video conference among the EU internal ministers followed. They agreed that the border controls were not functioning perfectly, therefore the EU should optimize protection at the borders.
"The revision of free movement in Europe as such, if it were an institutional revision, would be the end of Europe. The free movement of people, goods, professions is what constitutes Europe at this time. But if the president intends that it can be reviewed on the basis of the management of specific emergencies, I totally agree, we already do it within countries," Lombardi said.
Europe is seeking to ramp up its fight against radical Islamism and terrorism after several brutal religiously-motivated attacks in France and Austria in October and early November. Two weeks before Aoussaoui carried out the church attack, a 17-year-old local Muslim teen beheaded a Parisian teacher who had shown caricatures of Islamic prophet Muhammad during a freedom of speech lesson. Another terrorist attack took place in Austria on November 2, claiming the lives of four people, excluding the perpetrator, and injuring 17 others.
