SCHENGEN CRACKDOWN: Controls extended across EU over terror threat and migration crisis

TEMPORARY border controls introduced in the wake of the 2015 Paris terror attacks are being extended for another three months.

Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on Schengen

European Council ministers agreed to carry on the measures which were first implemented in May last year and effectively brought an end to the European Union’s so-called Schengen Zone which allows free movement across many EU states. 

The crackdown was put in place to ease public fears about a growing terror threat and also to stem the flow of migrants through Europe which had reached crisis levels with hundreds of thousands or people trying to get to the UK, France and Germany.

The tightened security will remain in place for at least another three months at Austria’s borders with Hungary, Slovenia and Germany; Danish ports with ferry connections to Germany and at the Danish-German land border; Swedish harbours in the south and west and at the Öresund bridge crossing; Norwegian ports with ferry connections to Denmark, Germany and Sweden.

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Migrants stranded in Hungary after it closed its borders

Farage bashes freedom of movement in Schengen rant

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Migrants arrive at the border between Austria and Germany

It comes just days after a French mayor blasted Schengen a 'failure' following the recent attack on the Louvre. 

Jacques Myard, mayor of Maisons-Laffitte, said: “We have two threats: the threat coming from abroad and of course this is a question of how we control our frontiers.

“This is a failure of Schengen. And we have also a threat inside France because we have a large community of Muslims.”

The European Council said border controls should be targeted and limited in scope, frequency, location and time, to what is strictly necessary to respond to the serious threat and to safeguard public policy and internal security resulting from the continued risk of secondary movements of migrants. 

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Border guards carry out security checks on vehicles travelling from Hungary to Austria

The Schengen Agreement abolished many of the EU's internal borders and enabled passport-free movement across most of the bloc when it took effect in 1995.

But the agreement, which takes its name from the town in Luxembourg in which it was signed, became a target for nationalists and Eurosceptics who warned it was an open door for migrants and criminals.

Cash-strapped eastern European countries within the zone became a magnet for migrants hoping to take advantage of their open borders to get to Germany. 

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Traffic queues to cross the Austria-Hungary border

And when ISIS killers went on the rampage through Paris in November 2015 in a series of attacks that left 130 people dead the whole idea came under the spotlight when it became clear the extremists had easily moved between Belgium and France.

It also emerged that that some of the Paris attackers had slipped into Europe with the crowds of migrants who arrived via Greece.

The latest European Council decision to extend the border controls within the Schengen Zone will be reviewed again the three months.

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