The European Parliament today voted in favour of new measures to improve security at the EU’s external borders by ensuring relevant checks of EU databases are made when people enter or leave the Schengen area. This comes as part of a series of measures adopted over the last year to improve the security of EU citizens.

The S&D Group supported the legislation, but has called for close monitoring of how the measures are implemented to ensure they do not lead to chaos at airports and border crossings.

S&D Group vice-president Tanja Fajon, who followed the report for the group, said:

“Improving the safety of European citizens remains our first priority. This includes improving the functioning of our external borders and ensuring that checks against relevant databases are made. However, we need a pragmatic and evidence based approach to all new security measures - focused on delivering tangible results, not just appearing to be doing something. If these measures are poorly managed, it will lead to huge queues and chaos at airports, which benefits no one and causes more security risks than it solves. We will carefully monitor how member states implement these measures to make sure this does not happen.

“We also need to ensure that strengthening our external borders goes hand in hand with returning to full internal free movement within the Schengen area. The recent decision by the Council to allow member states to prolong internal border controls shows we are moving in the wrong direction on this.”