The Schengen Area should be reviewed, and a number of countries should possibly be excluded from it, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday.
“The famous Schengen agreement… no longer works… Europe [that I believe in] keeps its borders, protects them, in this Europe there is a reasonable right to refugee status, and responsibility accompanies solidarity… It is on this basis that it is necessary to reform the Schengen area,” Macron told a press conference, saying that is should not be ruled out that after the revision there would be less states in the Schengen at the expense of those countries that “do not want to ensure common borders.”
The French leader, who has been in office since 2017, stressed that in order to succeed he had to make “unpopular” or “difficult” decisions and undertake responsibility for them.