France is “very opposed to building walls in Europe” in the aftermath of last week’s terrorist attacks on Paris, according to the French Ambassador, who is confident Europe’s open border Schengen agreement will not be consigned to the history books.
“For us, Schengen still has a future – it is a fundamental part of what we believe Europe should be,” Béatrice le Fraper du Hellen told The Sunday Times of Malta in an interview.
The future of Europe’s passport-free zone – the largest free travel area in the world – was already under threat by the migrant crisis, so after the Paris shootings many questioned whether it was doomed.
France immediately set out to impose indefinite border controls as EU nations agreed to tighten checks on all travellers, including European nationals, at the external borders.
On Friday, during an extraordinary meeting in Brussels, member states agreed “to implement immediately the necessary systematic and coordinated checks at external borders” of the EU free travel area.
This further fuelled the rhetoric that the Schengen agreement could buckle under the pressure as it was making Europe increasingly vulnerable to terrorism.
However, Ms le Fraper du Hellen is confident that despite the indefinite border controls, the objective remained to preserve passport-free travel while having a common system at the external borders of the Schengen zone.
“The point is focusing on the external borders. We’re very strong on maintaining Schengen and will not yield to pressure; France is very opposed to walls within Europe,” she stressed.
However, she feels it is crucial to have a common EU system to manage the continent’s borders.
Reflecting on the shootings of November 14 that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others, Ms le Fraper du Hellen said she felt safe in Malta and reassured by security measures on the island.
She also stressed that despite the attacks, French President François Hollande was still on track to travel to Malta on Friday for the Commonwealth summit.
This week Mr Hollande called on the EU to help in its fight against so-called Islamic State – or Daesh, a name the terror group hates, and which politicians are starting to use.
What was France expecting from the EU? Ms le Fraper du Hellen said apart from a united show of political support – which they had received overwhelmingly – France was seeking concrete help in military and police resources from individual countries, which would be the subject of bilateral talks.
She explained that this could involve help to relieve French troops from UN or EU duties abroad so that they could redeployed to work on targeting Isis’s training camps without weakening these operations in countries such as Mali.
Asked what France was specifically expecting from Malta, Ms le Fraper du Hellen said bilateral talks with Malta had yet to take place but she was aware of the island’s constitutional constraints.
“We’re very clear of the constraints imposed by the Constitution and no automatic measures will be asked of Malta,” she said, preferring not to say what was expected from the Maltese authorities so as not “to prejudge the bilateral talks”.
France was adopting a multidimensional strategy to strike training camps, stop Isis’s flow of money and weapons, and target the group’s radicalisation and propaganda.
Asked what made Paris a preferred target – this is the second terrorist attack in 10 months after the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was targeted by Isis in January – Ms le Fraper du Hellen did not believe it was a matter of lax security or solely France’s involvement in Syria.
“Let’s not lose perspective.
“This is an attack on our values. The French are very diverse and multicultural,” she said, adding that society had a short memory and there had been similar attacks in the past.
“We’ve had other terrorist attacks such as those on the subway during the Algerian civil war; terrible attacks on Jewish communities and we’ve survived it. We are a very open and diverse society. I’m being cautious about saying what is behind the reason for the latest attacks.”
“I’m struggling to comprehend the logic behind such attacks,” she added.
The attacks on Paris have led to an economic fallout with many cancelling their trips to the French capital. Ms le Fraper du Hellen said she had received a number of calls from concerned Maltese families asking if they should go ahead with their holiday to Disneyland.
“I will not take responsibility for that choice, but all I can say is that if there is any threat we will be very transparent.
“We’re very careful with the information we give not to alarm unnecessarily, but we are not trying to hide anything,” she reassured.