EU chief mounts desperate defence of Schengen zone

CRITICS of the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone are ‘exploiting the suffering of Paris’, Jean-Claude Juncker said yesterday.

French investigators have exposed how terrorists who attacked the city were able to sneak into Europe posing as Syrian refugees before being allowed to roam freely.

But in an extraordinary intervention, the president of the European Commission pledged to fight for Schengen. ‘I could not bear that my generation be the one to put up walls again in Europe – we have only just taken them down,’ Mr Juncker wrote in an article for the Malta Independent. ‘I also cannot bear and will not accept an amalgamation of the topics of refugees and terrorism in the wake of the atrocious attacks in Paris.

‘The cynics who exploit the suffering of Paris have not understood that those who perpetrated the attacks are precisely those whom the refugees are trying to flee.’

Two of the suicide bombers are thought to have got into Europe via Greek islands by pretending to be Syrian refugees. And Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the massacre, was able to slip in and out of Europe at least twice without arrest.

At an emergency summit of European interior ministers on Friday a major security clampdown at the borders was agreed in a last ditch bid to stop the collapse of Schengen. For the first time, all passengers will be vetted against terror watch lists.