The spectre of additional border controls looms over the Schengen Area after a deadly attack in Solingen, Germany.
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00:00After a failed Syrian asylum seeker killed three festival goers here in the city of Solingen,
00:06Chancellor Olaf Scholz is saying that questions must be answered as to why the man hadn't
00:11already been deported.
00:13When officials tried to take him from his refugee accommodation and deport him to Bulgaria
00:18last year, he was nowhere to be found.
00:22And now, feeling the pressure from the far right, it's not just Germany that's talking
00:25tough on deportation.
00:27Other governments in Europe are too.
00:31Many governments around the council, which is an institution, which is a new institution,
00:37are obsessed with security, with the security dimension towards migration.
00:43And more than that, we are all aware in the European Parliament that there are many governments
00:48who see migration as a kind of a threat, as a kind of a menace, as a kind of a crisis
00:55to EU security or to EU identity.
01:00The Migration and Asylum Pact, finally approved in May after almost four years of negotiations,
01:06already seems to be unsatisfactory for some European states.
01:10They're asking for exemptions and new measures on deportations.
01:15And it's this last point that seems to be a crucial one.
01:18Some member states are aiming at the, of the rules governing return of rejected asylum
01:26seekers to countries of origin or other transit countries.
01:33But also Wunderlein herself, the president of the commission, has said very explicitly
01:40that she aims at finding a novel approach, at defining a novel approach to returns.
01:48Another side of the coin for European countries is getting Mediterranean states to stop migrants
01:53setting out for Europe in the first place.
01:55And recently, the European Commission has entered into agreements with Tunisia, Morocco
02:00and Egypt to achieve this.
02:02I think it's very likely that we will see a strong push towards externalization.
02:08So the outsourcing of responsibilities to third countries in the next cycle.
02:14That being said, first of all, it takes two to tango.
02:18There must be cooperation with third countries on these issues.
02:22And very few third countries are willing to cooperate because domestically, these are
02:27seen by most third countries as divisive and unpopular.
02:32Meanwhile, eight states have suspended the free movement rule that's at the heart of
02:37the border-free Schengen area for much longer than they're legally allowed to.