The Commission is today proposing to strengthen the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the Schengen Information System (SIS), as announced in the Communication setting out the way forward towards the achievement of an effective and sustainable EU Security Union and as reiterated in President Juncker’s State of the Union Address. Consulted 2.9 billion times in 2015, SIS is the most widely used information sharing system for border management and security in Europe. The proposed improvements will further enhance the ability of the system to fight terrorism and cross-border crime, improve border and migration management and ensure an effective information exchange between Member States to increase the security of European citizens.
Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said: “With today’s proposals, we extend the scope of the Schengen Information System to close information gaps and improve information exchange on terrorism, cross-border crime and irregular migration – contributing to a stronger control of our external borders and an effective and sustainable EU Security Union. In the future, no critical information should ever be lost on potential terrorist suspects or irregular migrants crossing our external borders.”
As concluded by the Commission in its evaluation report on SIS, also presented today, the system has a clear added value at EU level and has been an outstanding operational and technical success. The evaluation also identifies areas for technical and operational improvements to further increase the effectiveness of the system – which can only be as efficient as the data it is fed.
In particular, the changes proposed by the Commission today will:
improve the security and accessibility of the system by providing for uniform requirements for officers on the ground on how to process SIS data in a secure way and ensure business-continuity for end-users;
strengthen data protection by introducing additional safeguards to ensure that the collection and processing of and access to data is limited to what is strictly necessary, in full respect of EU legislation and fundamental rights, including the right to effective remedies;
improve information sharing and cooperation between Member States, notably through the introduction of a new alert category on “unknown wanted persons” and full access rights for Europol ;
help combat terrorism by introducing the obligation to create a SIS alert in cases related to terrorist offences and a new ‘inquiry check’ to help authorities gather essential information;
better protect children by allowing authorities to issue, in addition to alerts for missing children, preventive alerts for children who are at high risk of abduction;
contribute to the effective enforcement of entry bans for third-country nationals at the external border by making their introduction in the SIS compulsory;
improve the enforcement of return decisions issued to irregularly staying third-country nationals by introducing a new alert category for return decisions;
make more effective use of data such as facial imaging and palm prints to identify persons entering the Schengen area;
strengthen the support for prevention and investigation of theft and counterfeiting by providing for alerts to be issued on a wider range of stolen and falsified goods and documents.