On Monday 6 November, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE) will give its views on a new raft of measures to combat terrorism, including new warnings in the Schengen Information System (SIS).
Proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2016 (see EUROPE 11694), these initiatives aim to make SIS more effective in detecting terror threats. It is suggested that the member states introduce new categories of alerts, particularly for terror-related crimes. The proposals also aim to improve the sharing of information and cooperate among member states by introducing a new category of warnings about unknown individuals who are sought and giving the Europol police cooperation agency the full right to access databases.
The proposal on the table should also allow police to better understand decisions by the member states to return non-EU country nationals.
In this regard, MEP Jeroen Lenaers (EPP, the Netherlands) writes in an introduction to a draft report that use of the Schengen Information System for the sharing of information about return decisions is a modest but essential measure among a series of EU measures to improve the effectiveness of returning illegal non-EU nationals. He says it is crucial to make the EU’s returns policy more effective in order to preserve public opinion’s confidence in the EU’s asylum and migration policy, pointing out that in 2015, the number of illegal migrants ordered to quit the EU stood at 533,395 but the total returns rate was around 42%.
In two other reports prepared by Carlos Coelho (EPP, Portugal), the MEPs will give their views on ways of improving the use of SIS in external border controls for police and judicial cooperation.
In terms of border controls, Coelho welcomed the European Commission’s proposal for a consultation procedure to be sued to avoid the same third country individual being alerted as not to be admitted while at the same time, he holds a document from a member state giving him the right of residence. The rapporteur would have preferred it if the Commission had tried to harmonise the approaches to lodging a non-admission alert in the Schengen Area.
On the use of SIS in judicial and criminal cases, new alerts have been created such as for missing children or children requiring special protection.
Unaccompanied children crossing EU borders are particularly vulnerable and can become the victims of people trafficking and various type of exploitation, explains Coelho, quoting Europol’s figure of 10,000 missing children.
In his draft report, Coelho suggests setting up a new sub-category of mission people where these children can be explicitly mentioned.
The Council of the EU has not yet decided on its negotiating position on the proposals on the table (see EUROPE 11806. 11799). (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)