This Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 December, the negotiators of the Council of the EU and of the European Parliament will meet to continue their negotiations on a series of legislative dossiers, but these meetings are not expected to lead to inter-institutional political agreements, even though a source on Monday said that there was “still a chance” of concluding on Eurodac.
Eurodac. On the Eurodac regulation, which registers the digital fingerprints of asylum seekers and other biometric data, the Estonian Presidency of the Council felt that an agreement was possible last week, but two other sources consider that this would be unlikely to happen this week.
Inter-institutional negotiations on the revision of the Eurodac regulation aim to give the law enforcement services access to this database. Three trialogue negotiating sessions have so far taken place and another two are planned before the end of the term in office of the current Estonian Presidency.
Although it has been possible to find common ground between the co-legislators on most of the provisions of the regulation being revised, the Council and Parliament still differ over the period of time for which asylum seekers' data should be kept, the report states.
The provisions on the consequences of failing to comply with the obligation to provide biometric data have also met with difficulties during the talks.
At Parliament's committee on civil liberties at the end of November, Monica Macovei (ECR, Romania), the rapporteur on this dossier, said that discussions were moving in the right direction and that progress had been made, for instance on guarantees for minor asylum seekers, procedures for accessing the database for Europol and also on data retention.
An agreement has yet to be reached between the negotiators on a conservation period for the data of five years, as Parliament is calling for, or ten years, as the Council would like to see. A chapter must also be included in the work in relation to the regulation on the resettlement of asylum seekers, which is also another matter of concern for the Eurodac dossier. There are also problems with retaliatory measures, in the event that an individual does not want his or her fingerprints and data to be taken.
ETIAS. On the EU travel authorisation system for third-country nationals enjoying visa exemptions (ETIAS), it will be “difficult” to conclude the work this Tuesday, the first source said, as not all of the outstanding questions have been resolved (see EUROPE 11910). Here again, these questions concern the type of data travellers will be asked to provide and how long they will be kept for.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, other trialogues related to the 'asylum' package are planned, for instance on the 'hosting conditions' and 'qualifications' directive and on the 'resettlement' regulation. On Wednesday, a further trialogue is scheduled on the Schengen Information System (SIS), again expected to be a stage rather than the final destination. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)