Luxembourg, 10/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - As part of the fight against terrorism, European interior ministers adopted a roadmap on Friday 10 June on strengthening the exchange of information among their services and the interoperability of information systems.
Discussions on the roadmap were stepped up after the 2015 terror attacks in France and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels (see EUROPE 11519).
The roadmap lists 50 actions to improve the management and exchange of information among the EU28 with the aim of supporting ongoing investigations and providing information rapidly to professionals on the ground, such as police officers, border guards and prosecutors.
Highly tangible actions foresee, for example, working on the format of messages, programmes to ensure mutual trust among various administrations and national practices and improving the use by the proper staff of databases such as the Schengen Information System. The option of the Europol agency becoming a partner of countries implementing the Prüm decision on the exchange of DNA is mentioned (see EUROPE 9444), so that this information can be compared with other files, such as digital fingerprints, along with developing the exchange of information with non-EU countries. Work will begin on drawing up indicative criteria to be added to databases of terror alerts.
The Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU stresses the importance in the roadmap of these exchanges, and the relevance of a single interface to give authorised personnel access so they can search all databases with a single click. The idea of a single interface of this kind was mentioned at the Home Affairs Council in April.
On Friday, European politicians debated how European databases such as the Schengen Information System is fuelled because gaps were highlighted after the 2014 attacks on the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the January 2015 attacks in Paris. Dutch security and justice minister Ard Van Der Steur said the member states have considerably improved their practices since then and over the past months have doubled or tripled the amount of information shared with databases.
A counter-terror working group has been set up in the form of a platform of 30 countries, including Norway and Switzerland. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)