EU: Council:Progress report on EES and ETIAS

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Council: Progress report on EES and ETIAS
28.3.17
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The Council Presidency has produced a report for COREPER and the Mixed Committee (which includes 4 non-EU countries that are part of the Schengen agreement - Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) on the "state of play" on: Information Technology (IT) measures related to border management a) Entry/Exit System (EES) b) EU Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) = Progress report (LIMITE doc no: 7064-17, pdf).

Entry-Exit System (EES)

"Considerable progress has been made on the EES file, composed of two draft Regulations, one setting up the EES and the other amending the Schengen Borders Code (Regulation (EU) 2016/399) to reflect the introduction of this new system. Building on the work carried out by the two previous Presidencies, the remaining outstanding issues have been addressed, and a mandate to enter interinstitutional negotiations (doc. 6960/17) was granted by Coreper on 2 March 2017 by a very large majority."

The "trilogues" with the European Parliament:

"A calendar for the trilogues has been tentatively agreed upon. Four political and seven technical trilogues have been planned, with the opening political trilogue scheduled to take place on 23 March 2017. The overall objective shared by the two co-legislators and the Commission is to come to a political agreement by the end of June 2017."

EU Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS)

"The Presidency identified other key issues that needed to be clarified and decided upon before revised text proposals could be submitted to delegations. The Presidency therefore prepared a discussion paper on which delegations were invited to comment. The issues outlined by the Presidency related to the division of competences between Frontex and the Member States, the definition of 'responsible Member State' as regards the decision to grant a travel authorisation, and the duration of a travel authorisation...

With respect to the definition of the 'responsible Member State', delegations were divided into two groups, one in favour of the Member State of first entry, as proposed by the Commission, while the other stressed the key role played by the Member State at the origin of an alert triggering a "hit"."

The following issues are the "object of extensive debates":

"– the scope of the regulation;
– the ETIAS watchlist and the screening rules;
– the access to the ETIAS data;
– the interoperability of ETIAS with other systems and databases."
[emphasis added throughout]

See also the Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS): Opinion 3/2017
EDPS Opinion on the Proposal for a European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS
(pdf)

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