Interoperability between EU information systems for security, border and migration management

Briefing 14-02-2018

This note seeks to provide an initial analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the European Commission's impact assessment (IA) accompanying the above proposals on (1) borders and visa; and on (2) police and judicial cooperation, asylum and migration, submitted on 12 December 2017 and referred to Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. In 2016, the European Commission stressed the need for interoperability between EU border and security information systems. Likewise, the Joint Declaration on the EU's legislative priorities for 2018-2019 identified interoperable EU information systems as a key priority. The initiative aims to make information exchange and data sharing between the various EU information systems more effective and efficient, fully upholding fundamental rights, so as to boost the protection of the EU's external borders, improve migration management and enhance internal security. Interoperability is not a new topic, already in 2004 the European Council called for enhanced interoperability between the Schengen Information System (SIS) II, the Visa Information System (VIS) and Eurodac (the EU asylum fingerprint database).