Paris attacks 'exploited' by immigration critics, claims Juncker

By Matthew Holehouse

Opponent of immigration are “exploiting” the Paris terrorist atrocity, Jean-Claude Juncker claimed today, amid mounting evidence that the refugee crisis is being used by Isis to traffic terrorists into Europe.

Days after France announced an indefinite reintroduction of border controls, the president of the European Commission vowed to “fight” to keep the Schengen zone alive and lashed out at “cynics” who had linked the migration crisis to the Paris attacks.At least two of the Paris suicide bombers, as well as the plots’ mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, are believed to have taken the migrant trail from Syria via Greece to Belgium and Paris. Intelligence officials fear “dozens if not hundreds” have slipped through, it was claimed yesterday.

However, writing in a Maltese newspaper, Mr Juncker said he did not accept any connection between the refugee crisis and the risk of terrorism.“I 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.” “We will only save Schengen by applying Schengen. I will fight for this. 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 added.

Member states backed France’s demand on Friday for every person entering Europe, including irregular migrants and EU-passport holders, to be subject to a full background check on the Schengen counter-terrorism database. The plan had been resisted by the European Commission, which is now tasked with revising the bloc’s border code. The Sunday Telegraph revealed yesterday how the European Commission had appeared to ignore warnings from Frontex, the EU borders agency, that the crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants cross into Europe was ripe for exploitation by Isil.

On Saturday Malta announced it could retain the suspension of Schengen indefinitely, following a temporary suspension for a summit of the Queen and Commonwealth leaders on the island at the end of this month. Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister, said the decision would be made on security grounds, following the discovery of a passport forgery ring.

That Malta, a small island nation which is already patrolled by a navy, could threaten to suspend Schengen is a sign of the gravity of the crisis affecting the passport-free travel zone. A string of countries imposed border controls to manage the refugee crisis, and Paris said it would retain border checks for as long as is necessary following the Paris atrocity.In a rare admission, Mr Juncker said that measures to crackdown on illegal people smuggling and speed up the registration of migrants should have happened “years ago”.

“As always in life, we cannot go back but we can do better in the future,” he conceded.On Friday Heinz-Christian Strache, the Austrian far-right leader, called for convicted militants to be jailed for life on an EU island prison."Maybe the Greeks will help us, or maybe the Italians with Lampedusa,” he said.