Terror messages must be deleted within an hour, Macron insists

French President Emmanuel Macron looks at German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a screen, during a conference on terrorism. Photo / AP

Emmanuel Macron has demanded that all terror messages be deleted from social media within one hour and slammed the "misuse" of Europe's asylum system by those bent on crime or terrorism.

The French President also called for the creation of a European "internal security council" to tackle terror and sanction states that failed to protect Europe's borders.

Europe, he said, must agree to enforce the removal of online terror messages "within an hour" of them being published.

He also reiterated his plea for a total overhaul of the Schengen free-movement area.

"Any security chink at [the EU's] external borders or inside member states is a security risk for the other states," said Macron.

After a meeting with several EU leaders and officials to discuss the terror threat, Macron said that "in all of our countries we are witnessing a misuse of the right to asylum" by traffickers, criminal gangs, or people from countries "which are not at war".

He said that the aim was not to limit the right of asylum but to better protect Europe's external borders. His words came after Clément Beaune, the French Europe Minister, called for Frontex, the European border force, to increase in size from 1500 to 10,000 people.

After Trump’s 2016 election he fielded calls and foreign visits haphazardly, seemingly at random. Biden comes out of the gate in a clear and orderly fashion that reaffirms US relations with Western democracies. https://t.co/PzzMei5lKD

— Michael Crowley (@michaelcrowley) November 11, 2020

Macron was speaking at an online summit attended by Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian Chancellor; Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor; Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister; Charles Michel, the European Council President; and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President.

The French President called the summit a week after a convicted Isis supporter shot dead four people in the heart of Vienna.

Last month, a Chechen militant with asylum status beheaded a history teacher outside Paris and two weeks later, a Tunisian who had just arrived in France after taking a migrant boat to Italy stabbed three people to death at a Nice church.

Merkel agreed that "we need to know who enters and leaves the Schengen zone" and insisted that the war on Islamist terrorism was "not a fight between Islam and Christianity but the need for a model of democratic society to combat terrorist and anti-democratic behaviour".

“Biden should have a lot to talk about with Emmanuel Macron, the French president who in 2017 managed to defeat the nationalist demagogue Marine Le Pen and has since faced down a tea-party-like populist uprising.” https://t.co/FamOtN1XBm

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) November 10, 2020

Macron urged European countries to develop a "rapid and coordinated response" to attacks, focusing on "the development of common databases, the exchange of information or the strengthening of criminal policies".

Leaders called for a "determined fight against terrorist propaganda and hate speech on the internet".

"The internet is a space of freedom, our social networks too, but this freedom exists only if there is security and if it is not the refuge of those who flout our values or seek to indoctrinate with deadly ideologies," said Macron.

The leaders are due to seek to reach agreement on such proposals at a European Council meeting on December 10.