The Council of the EU and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement on new rules for the Visa Information System (VIS), which contains information on all applicants for short-stay Schengen visas. Under the new rules, the system will be extended to include certain data on long-stay visas, more data will be held on short-stay visa applicants (including by lowering the fingerprinting age from 12 to 6 years of age) and the system will be made 'interoperable' with other EU databases. New checks will be performed on visa applicants by cross-referencing their data with those databases, and the system will also make use of a profiling tool to assess the potential 'risk' posed by visa applicants. "Technical" discussions are ongoing to finalise the text.
Sources:
- Visa Information System: Council Presidency and European Parliament reach provisional agreement on main elements (Council of the EU, 8 December 2020, link)
- Deal on an enhanced information system for visas in the EU (European Parliament, 8 December 2020, link)
For more information on the new plans for processing visa applications, see two Statewatch reports from earlier this year:
- Automated suspicion: The EU’s new travel surveillance initiatives: explaining the plans to make systems for visas and travel authorisations “interoperable” with other EU databases, and the new screening and profiling tools that will be introduced as part of that initiative.
- Deportation Union: Rights, accountability, and the EU’s push to increase forced removals: which explains how one element of the VIS expansion – namely, including a copy of an individual’s biographic data page from their passport or travel document in the central database – will be used to facilitate expulsions.