(Reuters) The European Union needs an emergency response mechanism that a member state can trigger when the bloc’s external borders are under threat, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
Migration crises along the EU’s eastern flank this autumn underlined Europe’s need to strengthen its ability to control who moves in and out of the bloc, the president said.
Only if Europe mastered its outside borders could free movement within the bloc’s Schengen zone function properly, Macron added, as he set out a key reform plank of France’s rotating presidency of the EU.
“A sovereign Europe is for me above all a Europe capable of controlling its borders,” Macron told a news conference.
