But then the argument changed. The media across the globe were already describing Europe as ‘buckling’ under the strain of the new arrivals when, on the evening of Friday 13 November, Paris was rocked by three hours of coordinated terrorist attacks. Gunmen in a car using assault rifles drove by and shot at Parisians as they were eating and drinking in bars and restaurants. At the same time suicide bombers struck at the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis where President Hollande was among the crowd watching a football game. As well as further shootings and a suicide bombing at more restaurants, three gunmen entered the Bataclan theatre concert hall on the Boulevard Voltaire. While more than a thousand people were listening to a heavy-metal concert the attackers started firing assault rifles and gunned down as many people as they could. They lined up the wheelchair users in the disabled section of the theatre and shot them one by one. Elsewhere they roamed through the building hunting down people where they lay wounded or hiding. One young woman who survived wrote afterwards: ‘As I lay down in the blood of strangers and waiting for my bullet to end my mere 22 years, I envisioned every face that I have ever loved and whispered I love you, over and over again, reflecting on the highlights of my life.’ The men continued to shoot people throughout the theatre until the police arrived, at which point the gunmen detonated suicide vests. By the end of the evening in Paris 129 people had been killed and many hundreds more were wounded.

The Islamic State in Syria claimed responsibility for the attacks. As with every previous terrorist attack in Europe, the continent held its breath and pondered the worst-case scenario. In time it transpired that the culprits were from France and Belgium. But after the attack one of the ringleaders had been able to safely return to Belgium. Of equal significance was that one of the Stade de France suicide bombers had a fake Syrian passport in the name ‘Ahmad al Mohammad’. Officials admitted that a person of this name had entered Europe as an asylum seeker the month before the attacks. Fingerprints turned out to match a man who had been using that name to enter Greece in October. The person using the name had been picked up by Greek coastguards at the beginning of that month on a sinking boat filled with 70 other migrants. In November he appeared to have travelled from the Isle of Leros, through Serbia, Croatia, Austria and Hungary and finally to Saint-Denis. Although the news emerged exceptionally slowly, by a year after the attack it was clear that the majority of the Paris attackers, including the ringleaders, had not only been to Syria to receive terrorist training, but had slipped in and out of Europe whilst posing as migrants.