Asylum system ‘misused’ by terrorists to harm Europe, warns Emmanuel Macron

French president said abuse of asylum was a problem in online summit on terror

Credit: MARKUS SCHREIBER/AFP

Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday demanded that all terror messages be deleted from social media within one hour and slammed the "misuse" of Europe’s asylum system by those bent on crime or terror.

The French president also called for the creation of a European “internal security council” to tackle terror and sanction states that fail to protect Europe’s borders.

Europe, he said must agree to enforce the removal of online terror messages “within an hour” of them being published. He also reiterated his plea for a total overhaul of the Schengen free-movement area.

“Any security chink at (the EU’s) external borders or inside member states is a security risk for the other states,” said Mr Macron.

After a meeting with several EU leaders and officials to discuss the terror threat, Mr Macron said that “in all of our countries we are witnessing a misuse of the right to asylum" by traffickers, criminal gangs, or people from countries "which are not at war”.

He said that the aim was not to limit the right of asylum but to better protect Europe’s external borders. His words came after France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, called for Frontex, the European border force to increase in size from 1,500 to 10,000 people.

Emmanuel Macron says asylum is being 'misused' by terrorists to hurt Europe

Credit:  Anadolu Agency

Mr Macron was speaking at an online summit attended by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, European Council chief Charles Michel and EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.

The French leader called the summit a week after a convicted Islamic State group supporter killed four people in a shooting rampage in the heart of Vienna. Last month, a Chechen militant with asylum status beheaded a history teacher outside Paris and two weeks later, a Tunisian who had just arrived in France after taking a migrant boat to Italy stabbed three people to death at a church in Nice.

Mrs Merkel agreed that "we need to know who enters and leaves the Schengen zone". She also insisted that the war on Islamist terrorism was "not a fight between Islam and Christianity but the need for a model of democratic society to combat terrorist and anti-democratic behaviour."

Mr Macron urged European countries to develop a "rapid and coordinated response" to such attacks focusing on "the development of common databases, the exchange of information or the strengthening of criminal policies”.

Leaders called for a "determined fight against terrorist propaganda and hate speech on the internet". The French president said it was time to take further an online counter-terror plan France and Britain drew up in 2017.

”The internet is a space of freedom, our social networks too, but this freedom exists only if there is security and if it is not the refuge of those who flout our values or seek to indoctrinate with deadly ideologies," said Mr Macron. 

The leaders are due to seek to reach agreement on such proposals at a European Council meeting on December 10.