Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela has called upon his European counterparts to act together to safeguard the Schengen area in the interest of citizens.

Speaking at a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, Mr Abela stated that the EU needed to address vulnerabilities in the Schengen system and security concerns that might arise from time to time to ensure Schengen was preserved, while ensuring that security concerns were properly addressed.

The focus of the meeting was on migration and terrorism.

Mr Abela said progress had been slow in terms of the implementation of agreed measures aimed at addressing migration flows.

“There is not just one particular factor that is the cause for the lack of progress – it is a conglomeration of difficulties which need to be addressed step by step,” he said.

The EU, he said, needed to move away from reactive crisis management and focus on the medium to long term perspective:

“We need to make sure that we can prevent these crises developing in the future and that means developing the needed tools - the EU migration and asylum policy.”

Mr Abela also underlined the need to ensure effective implementation of the action plan agreed at the Valletta Summit, as this was essential to tackle migration with African partners.

On the fight against terrorism, Mr Abela said member states needed to work closely to allow for the detection of travel paths and patterns of foreign fighters, as well as to trace radicalised individuals.

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