Schengen: Progress report
01 January 1996
A progress report on the implementation of the Schengen Agreement given to the Belgian parliament last autumn showed that during the first three months of its operation an observatory structure was "created in order to identify, analyse and resolve the technical difficulties". Although "it was not initially envisaged the Central Group decided to add points [to its brief] concerning visas, consular cooperation & the problems of asylum, for these are important & particularly visible elements of the Treaty."
The report says that: "the Schengen Information System (SIS) functions satisfactorily" and that there are now 9 directors & 18 technicians full time divided into 5 teams so that there is a permanent presence and the network works 24 hours a day. "The SIS is the largest European system and permits frontiers to be opened without an increase of crime & illegal immigration." On the operation of the SIRENE system, which permits the electronic exchange of information on granting visas: "It is used much more than was originally imagined."
Controls at exterior frontiers using the SIS the report says has worked well on the whole. But for control of seaports and visas for sailors it recommends that Schengen states adopt the "EISICS" (the European Information System of Immigration Control in Seaports).
However, the report raises a number of legal problems which have arisen including: that fact that Portugal does not permit the extradition of people condemned to life imprisonment; "Magistrates need to fully integrate the Schengen mechanisms - only then will the legal cooperation be fully effective"; "Several embassies of Schengen states, principally in the Near and Middle East, grant an abnormally high number of visas with limited territorial validity (VTL): either because they don't have time for the necessary consultations with other states - which can take a very long time - or because they misinterpret the agreements on this type of visa. That certain embassies grant more VTL visas than Schengen visas is a danger to the Schengen system & this practice should be rapidly abandoned." The report concludes by saying:
"It has become clear that the Schengen Treaty is a sort of laboratory for the European Union - the experiments begun within it will doubtless one day be transferred to the whole of Europe. The adhesion of new members - Austria is the most recent example - without needing to alter the basic Agreement of 1985 is a fine example of the efficiency of the tactic of creating a hard core of states which experiment and show the way to the others."
Schengen: Rapport du Groupe Central sur la mise en application de la Convention de Schengen, Groupe central, Bruxelles, 19.6.95.