EU tightens border checks, gun control after Paris

Interior and justice ministers, who met in Brussels at the request of France following the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people, also agreed to share more intelligence, especially on suspects like the Belgians and Frenchmen believed to have come back from Syria to strike at Parisians a week ago.

And they will put in place new controls on bitcoin, cash and other ways of moving money around Europe outside monitored banking systems.

"We need to act firmly, we need to act swiftly and with force," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told a news conference as he hailed the level of support France had secured.

With indications that some of the Paris attackers, who were on counter-terrorism watchlists, reached Europe among crowds of refugees or on fake passports, all travelers, including EU citizens, going to or from the 26-nation open-borders Schengen zone will systematically be checked against police databases.

At present, most EU citizens are merely subject to a visual check of their documents. Pressed by France, ministers also agreed to revise the Schengen border code in due course to make such systematic checks of EU citizens compulsory and also introduce biometric data checks for those crossing the borders.

The arrival of some million migrants, including many Syrian refugees, this year and their subsequent mass movements across Europe's borders has shaken the Schengen system. Security fears after the Paris attacks have also seen states reintroduce checks at once-untended frontiers. The ministers repeated a will to implement measures agreed this year to check better who enters.

Ministers also agreed to press for a deal by the end of the year on sharing airline travelers' data, the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) program, which has long been stalled in the European Parliament over concerns for privacy.