RIGHT SPEAK: INVASION OF EUROPE: Paris Terror Attacks Transform Debate Over Europe’s Migration Crisis

An armed French police officer stands guard at the

Franco-Italian border to check vehicles and verify the

identity of travelers near Menton, France, on Sunday.

Reuters

Attacks fuel political calls for closing borders, revamping open-door policies toward refugees

The Paris attacks are transforming Europe’s migration crisis into a security debate, spurring calls for a clampdown on free movement across borders, and putting proponents of an open door for refugees on the defensive.

France’s firm belief that Islamic State militants planned the attacks—and the possibility that at least one assailant may have posed as a Syrian refugee—are fueling arguments over whether Europe is doing enough to protect itself from terrorists who might infiltrate the thousands of migrants arriving daily from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Evidence that some of the attackers crossed internal European Union boundaries to get to Paris have also brought more demands from EU-skeptic politicians to abolish the continent’s system of open borders.

To proponents of European integration, the attacks highlight the need for more EU cooperation on security and better joint protection of the bloc’s external frontier. But those voices, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are now likely to face even stronger opposition from politicians who want to show they are taking national security more seriously than lofty European ideals.

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More border controls within the EU might follow, each of them undermining Europe’s Schengen accord—which provides for passport-free travel across the borders of 26 signatory countries—said Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Pressure is growing on countries to act,” Mr. Janning said, “but the ability to do so in a European framework is not.”

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said President François Hollande’s move to impose temporary border controls in the wake of the attacks was insufficient. Instead, she said, the Schengen freedoms should be abolished and France’s protected borders re-established.