EU: Schengen Information System II - fait accompli?
01 January 2005
- After four years of secret negotiations, construction of SIS II is underway. Incredibly, the Council is yet to consult parliaments and the public on the new “functionalities” and consequences
Introduction
In September 2004 the European Commission signed a €40 million contract with a consortium of IT specialists to build two sprawling new EU law enforcement databases: the ‘second generation’ Schengen Information System (SIS II) and the new Visa Information System (VIS). SIS II and VIS have very serious implications for the people who will be registered and will provide EU law enforcement agencies with a powerful apparatus for surveillance and control. In reality, SIS II and VIS will be a single system that is scheduled to go online early in 2007.
The Council has agreed on the scope, function and system architecture of SIS II after four years of secret discussions but – incredibly – has still to consult the European or national parliaments or the wider public on these issues. With the new functionalities already being built into SIS II, the question now is whether there is any possibility at all for democratic input, or whether instead the system is now a ‘fait accompli’, with the prospect that the Council will try to ‘bounce’ the European Parliament into a quick decision on the long awaited draft legislation.
This article analyses the development of SIS II, the new functions, the implications for groups and individuals that will be registered, and the decision-making process.
Background: the SIS
The Schengen Information System went online in 1995 between the first seven Schengen member states (France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain and Portugal). Italy, Austria and Greece joined in 1997 and the Nordic EU states of Denmark, Sweden and Finland, together with non-members Norway and Iceland, joined ‘SIS 1+’ in 2000. By this time, the SIS had been incorporated into the EU Justice and Home Affairs framework under the Amsterdam Treaty. The UK and Ireland are the only EU member states not yet participating, though the UK is to be incorporated later this year, with Ireland to follow. SIS II will incorporate the ten new EU member states.
Conceptually, the SIS can be seen as a kind of EU-wide version of the UK’s Police National Computer, alerting police officers, border guards and customs officials across the Schengen area to persons and items of interest to one another. Indeed, the incorporation of the UK into the SIS is a direct extension of the PNC – every routine PNC check will automatically check data against the SIS (but because of the UK and Ireland’s limited application of the Schengen agreement and refusal to lift internal border controls the two states will not have access to the immigration data in SIS).
Though the SIS and UK PNC both allow persons of ‘interest’ to be ‘flagged’, there are crucial differences. The UK PNC contains detailed historical information and identification data, including criminal record data and fingerprints, which maybe used for investigative purposes, whereas the SIS contains only basic information and works on a ‘hit/no hit basis’. SIS II is to change all this.
At present, the SIS contains six kinds of alert (record):
- people wanted for arrest and extradition (Article 95)
- people to be refused entry to the Schengen area(Article 96)
- missing and dangerous persons (Article 97)
- people wanted to appear in court (Article 98)
- people to be placed under surveillance (Article 99)
- lost and stolen objects (Article 100)
Since 1995 more than 15 million records have been created on the SIS. The vast majority of records concern lost or stolen items (Article 100), and the vast majority of these are lost and stolen identity documents. The latest figures available (June 2003) show that more than one million records have been created on persons (877,655 plus 386,402 aliases). The vast majority of these – 780,922 – a