Former European Commission secretary general Catherine Day says she hopes the Paris attacks will not mark the end of the Schengen Agreement, which abolished passports for travel between 26 European countries.
Ms Day, who was appointed special adviser to Jean-Claude Juncker following her retirement as the EU’s top official last month after almost a decade in the role, received the European of the Year 2015 award from European Movement Ireland in Dublin on Monday.
"A lot of people are worried that this is the end of Schengen. I hope not...I don't think it will be. It may be temporarily restricted but I think having tasted it people will want to get back to it," she told The Irish Times.
Ms Day said she had grown used to travelling without passport controls, and noticed the difference when she returned to Dublin from Brussels. Ireland, like Britain, has opted out of the Schengen travel area.
She said the attacks in Paris had been designed to frighten but Europeans did not want to lose their freedoms.
“Even several days later it’s still hard to take it in, isn’t it? It’s senseless because it doesn’t achieve anything but it’s frightening and that’s what it’s designed to do, is to strike fear into people’s hearts,” she said.
“So I hope the French and everybody else would be wise because this is going to be long haul. It’s not going to be fixed quickly.”
Ms Day said she was looking forward to spending more time in Ireland in the future.
“I’m used to living on the continent, I have a lot of friends there. I’m looking forward to spending much more time in Ireland, but I also like that other part of my life.”
She said she believed Irish people remained very positively disposed towards the European Union but she had picked up some euroscepticism.
“I’m a bit sad to hear a certain degree of euroscepticism. The EU is very complicated and you can’t explain it in two sound bites. People are very quick to criticise relatively small things now and to damn the whole construction because of it.
“We have to think of the EU as an extension of ourselves. It’s not something alien imposed on us, but it’s hard to get people to see it like that.”
She said the British people would be “the biggest losers” in the event of a Brexit, while Ireland and the EU would also be disadvantaged.
Ms Day said she was not suggesting people should be uncritical about the EU. “It has to change, and it is changing,” she said.
The EU could appear “tedious and complicated”, she acknowledged.
“The EU is not efficient, but for a good reason. We take the extra time to try to bring people on board, rather than to overrule them.”
Forging agreements could appear to take a long time, but once secured the agreements were solid.
She said people should try to criticise with a constructive rather than a negative agenda.
