The European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE) adopted a raft of new measures on Monday 6 November to combat terrorism by strengthening use of the Schengen Information System (SIS) and allowing the creation of new alerts.
Proposed at the end of 2016 (see EUROPE 11694), these initiatives aim to boost the effectiveness of SIS for detecting terrorist threats. The proposal on the table should also allow the police to know the returns decisions made by other member states for people from non-EU countries.
On Monday, by 40 to 5 with 8 abstentions, the committee adopted its negotiating position on the proposal on returns decisions and by 42 to 5 with 4 abstentions, they have given rapporteur Jeroen Lenaers (EPP, the Netherlands) a negotiating mandate for talks with the Council. They also adopted two other reports, prepared by Carlos Coehlo (EPP, Portugal), on improvements in the use of SIS for external border controls (by 43 to 5 with abstentions, and the same vote for the negotiating mandate) and on police and judicial cooperation by 41 to 3 with 4 abstentions, (40 to 5 with 2 abstentions for the mandate). EUROPE will be returning to this. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)