Nick Clegg: This is no time for divisions, it’s what the extremists want

What people find much harder to stomach is when governments fail to act competently in concert with each other to keep their own citizens safe. The mess on Europe’s borders understandably enrages people: you can either have strong external borders and no internal borders within Europe; or strong internal borders and no external borders; what you can’t have is none of either. Yet that is what now appears to be the case as the borderless Schengen area — and with it the principle of free movement itself — comes under unprecedented strain. So the imposition of properly policed external borders should now be a priority for EU governments, if necessary deploying internal controls temporarily until those external checks are in place.

The British Government has taken a short-sighted approach towards EU co-ordination on judicial, police and border co-ordination. In the last Government, I was bewildered at the willingness of Eurosceptic Conservatives to jeopardise the safety of British citizens by pushing for the UK to withdraw from vital crime- and terrorist-busting measures such as the European Arrest Warrant. That measure alone led, among other cases, to the speedy extradition of Hussain Osman, one of the 7/7 bombers, from Italy to the UK.

Equally, it is wrong of Farage to claim he is speaking for the security of the nation when withdrawal from the EU would weaken our ability to pursue cross-border criminals and terrorist networks. As Sir Hugh Orde, the former head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, rightly argues, British withdrawal from the wider panoply of EU police and judicial measures and institutions such as Europol would make us more, not less, vulnerable to attack.

It is not too late for the Government to end its stand-offishness towards EU crime-busting measures, and to take a lead in strengthening the capacity of the EU to improve data co-ordination, police and judicial co-operation, and develop a coherent approach to border security.

But perhaps the hardest task of all is a huge geostrategic challenge: the need for a massive stabilisation effort across the Mediterranean basin. The Mediterranean, across its North African coast to its Middle Eastern shores, from the refugee camps on Greek islands to the economic hardship in southern Europe, is a region in acute distress.

For my generation, the response by the EU and the wider world to the collapse of the Berlin Wall gave internationalists something to be proud of. A vast effort was assembled, mobilising hundreds of billions of pounds of economic support, new institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, and a trajectory of membership into the EU which supported fledgling democracies in a string of countries left traumatised by decades of Soviet rule. It was an overwhelming success.

Europe desperately needs to rediscover a similar ambition towards the Mediterranean. If the EU can preside over post-war reconciliation between France and Germany, extend its membership across the continent, create the world’s largest borderless single market and create a new (if presently wobbly) currency, surely it can lead an international effort to bring stability to the Mediterranean? This should be the single most important project for the current generation of European leaders.

Europe responded in woeful fashion to the Arab Spring five years ago. Britain failed to provide meaningful backing to Libya in the wake of our air strikes there, a military intervention I supported as Deputy Prime Minister. We must learn from our mistakes.

The Mediterranean may be the crucible of European civilisation but it is now the source of many of the ideological, economic and social problems our continent faces. We will all pay the consequences in years to come, if we do not make a concerted attempt to anchor political stability and economic prosperity across Europe’s southern flank. It will take a decade or more of determined, consistent leadership to pull the Mediterranean back from the brink. It will cost a huge amount of money.

For the sake of those who died in Paris last week, and for those we wish to protect in the future, it must be done.