In Cologne on NYE 2015, there was, we all remember, mayhem as the girls in the crowd, out to enjoy themselves, found themselves surrounded, then groped and then attacked by hordes of North African men, mostly immigrants.

The shock that caused, followed by some terrorist attacks such as at the supermarket in Munich and very recently at the Christmas market in Berlin, put paid, we may say, to Angela Merkel’s dream of providing a home to a million migrants escaping from war in Syria.

Xenophobes of all hues, especially Afd, lost no time to sow fear and anger in the German community, hoping to reap success at this year’s election.

Fast-forward to NYE 2016. Crowds turned out near the Cologne railway station, like the previous year. But this time there were 1,200 police officers, against the mere 100 of last year, and no accident was reported. Men of dark hue, mainly migrants, were penned and pushed back until they decided to leave.

Unfortunately, the Berlin massacre of just a few weeks back is still too fresh in people’s minds to set people’s minds at rest they are being protected well.

Europe is now living in the shadow of terrorism, after the multiple massacres of last year, from Brussels to Nice, not forgetting the Paris attacks of previous months. Although life has returned to normal, people are still wary. Only the other day in Italy, people panicked inside a cinema and rushed out because of a rumour of an attack which later proved to be spurious.

At EU level, there is much work being done to improve coordination and pro-active response. Sometimes, this is needed even inside a single country. Germany, for instance, which is a federal state, has found out there is a complete lack of coordination between the different states and this is now being addressed with the creation of a federal intelligence agency, not without some misgivings.

This is what the EU ministers of the interior should be doing, we argue, although the focus on repatriation of illegal migrants, the subject of the discussions between the Maltese and the Italian ministers is also very important.

It is undoubtedly good to sift and identify those who should not be here but it is perhaps even more important to provide tangible security to people who do not deserve to be left in an atmosphere of tension and fear.

As we noted when we spoke on Turkey earlier this week, this is what the terrorists want – to instill fear and insecurity into the population so that terrorists would rule.

The rules of the Council meetings will ensure that the desires of member states are given due consideration. So it will not be because one or more states wants to discuss subject A that subject A necessarily gets discussed. It seems clear, at least from this point of view, that enhancing security across Europe will be deemed more urgent and important that picking on a few Malians whose only fault is that they come from Mali.

In the light of all this, it may be felt that the Schengen system needs a thorough overhaul: once the link between landing in Malta and finding Europe to be open door is broken, the ‘attractiveness’ of Malta as a gateway to Europe dwindles.