Macron takes aim at migration with eye on French election

TOURCOING, France (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron is taking aim at migration — a core issue in the country's presidential campaign — by pushing to strengthen the European Union's external borders against people illegally entering the bloc’s passport-free area.

Macron is expected to run for a second term in France's April 3 presidential election. Conservative and far-right candidates have made migration a top campaign theme, criticizing what they see as Macron's inaction on stemming migration.

“Our passport-free area (in Europe) is being threatened if we don’t know how to guard our external borders and monitor who is entering in,” Macron told the La Voix du Nord newspaper.

Macron met with the EU's interior ministers in northern France on Wednesday evening, as the country holds the bloc's six-month rotating presidency. He also met earlier in the day with local officials to discuss economic issues in the former mining region.

Macron said migration policies need to be discussed within a specific political body that will be able to anticipate and draw plans up to prevent crisises.

“We want to establish a real Schengen Council to supervise the (passport-free) Schengen area, like what we have for the eurozone," Macron said in a speech in the city of Tourcoing on the Belgian border. He proposed that the first meeting of the council be held next month.

The Schengen area comprises 26 countries — including non-EU nations Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. During the pandemic, many Schengen nations erected temporary border controls that went contrary to the zone's ‘freedom of movement’ ideal.

Macron also wants to create a “rapid reaction force” to help protect EU states' borders in case of a migrant surge and is also pushing for a rethink of the bloc's...