On Wednesday 31 May, the national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) took note of progress in the work on the Schengen Information System (SIS) – a system which the European Commission proposed consolidating at the end of 2016, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Europe.
At the end of 2016, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos proposed creating new alerts in the SIS, particularly for terrorism-related crimes. This also involved improving the sharing of information and cooperation between member states, notably by introducing a new category of signals relating to "unknown wanted persons" and by granting the police cooperation agency Europol full rights of access to the SIS database.
On 9 June, the EU's home affairs ministers will focus on issues still open in this file, when they meet in Luxembourg.
According to a note from the EU Council on 29 May, discussions "took place in a constructive atmosphere and considerable progress has been made at working group level". But many delegations maintain a reservation for general scrutiny, especially Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and the UK.
Accelerating the return of illegal migrants. Other delegations, like Belgium and Slovakia, maintain a reservation on the other part of the revision – in other words, on the issue of returns. Indeed, the legislative proposal suggests that the SIS must contain data on people who are subject to inadmissibility – this innovation being to accelerate the execution of decisions on the return of migrants in an illegal situation in the EU.
The proposal on returns is still subject to an opinion and legal advice from the Council, the notes states.
According to the Council note, many aspects of the reform have now been agreed, but "the discussions within the working group have revealed that certain questions require further negotiations". Among the points that are still outstanding are the obligation to create alerts on unknown wanted persons, early alerts on people who have disappeared, and the obligation to create alerts on subjects concerning terrorism-linked activities.
On Wednesday, Coreper still had to discuss other parts of the reform, like the relevance of creating early alerts for children at risk of being abducted – alerts that would enable member state authorities to flag up children presenting a particular risk.
These changes would mean that, when there is a high risk of imminent parental abduction, border guards and people in charge of enforcing the law will be made aware of the risk and will be able to examine the circumstances in closer detail in which children can be found at high risk of abduction when they travel. Protective custody decisions could then be taken for these children in order to protect them.
In addition, other questions were raised on the usefulness of developing the use of SIS in other areas of judicial cooperation. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)