MEPs agree to extended Schengen transition period

Commission and member states get more time to test new Schengen database.

The European Parliament agreed today (18 May) to extend the transition period needed to set up the EU’s new second-generation Schengen Information System (SIS II).

MEPs voted to give the European Commission and member states more time to test the new system before it transfers the old shared database to the new one.

The SIS II is supposed to provide increased security at the EU’s external borders of the bloc’s 24-nation passport-free travel zone, which also includes non-EU members Iceland and Norway.

The new system gives national border control agents and law enforcement agencies access to a shared database of personal data on travellers, including biometric data like fingerprints. However setting up the new computer system, which was supposed to be up and running by 2007, has been plagued with delays and extra costs. This meant that the Parliament’s vote was needed to extend legal provisions needed for the system before they expired in June. EU officials say they hope to have the new system operational by the end of 2011.

 

More scrutiny

 

Carlos Coelho, a Portuguese centre-right MEP who wrote the Parliament’s report on the issue, said that SIS II “should play an important role in fighting crime and in external border control in Europe”.

Coelho’s report includes a call for tougher Parliamentary scrutiny of the system’s migration to the new system to prevent additional delays and costs.

A test in March ended with the system breaking down but was declared a success by the European Commission, whose experts said that the member states had fed too many data into the computer system.

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The SIS II is being developed by a consortium led by Steria, a French company, and Hewlett-Packard Belgium, with overall project management in the hands of the Commission. Officials estimate that the project has cost between €80 million and €90m so far, which is much higher than the €16m originally set aside