Activites

• 2008/08/13 Final act published in Official Journal
  • Decision 2008/633
  • OJ L 218 13.08.2008, p. 0129
• #2807
• 2007/06/12 Council Meeting
• 2007/06/12 End of procedure in Parliament
• 2007/06/12 Act adopted by Council after consultation of Parliament
• 2007/06/07 Results of vote in Parliament
  • Results of vote in Parliament
  • T6-0229/2007 summary

    The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Baroness Sarah LUDFORD (ALDE, UK) amending - under the consultation procedure - the proposed Council decision on access for consultation of the VIS by the authorities of the Member States responsible for internal security and by Europol for the purposes of the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences and of other serious criminal offences. The main amendments were as follows:- in the list of definitions, 'serious criminal offences' shall mean the forms of crime "which correspond or are equivalent to those referred to in Article 2(2) of the Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant";- every Member State shall keep a list of the designated authorities. Within three months after the Decision enters into force every Member State shall notify in a declaration to the Commission and the General Secretariat of the Council their designated authorities. Every Member State shall designate the central access point(s) through which the access is done;- at national level, each Member State shall keep a list of the operating units within the designated authorities that are authorised to access the VIS through the central access point(s);- only duly empowered staff of the operational units as well as the central access point(s) shall be authorised to access the VIS in accordance with the Article on the process for access to the VIS. The central access points should process the requests to the VIS following verification whether all conditions for access are fulfilled. In an exceptional case of urgency the central access points shall process the request immediately and only do the verification afterwards;- Parliament adopted a series of amendments aimed at ensuring adequate data protection. Each Member State shall ensure an adequate data protection level in its national law which at least corresponds to that resulting from the Council of Europe Convention of 28 January 1981 for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data and, for those Member States which have ratified it, the Additional Protocol of 8 November 2001 to that Convention, and shall take into account Recommendation No. R (87) 15 of 17 September 1987 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe Regul ating the Use of Personal Data in the Police Sector;-personal data obtained from the VIS shall only be processed for the purposes of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences or other serious criminal offences;- personal data obtained from the VIS should not be transferred or made available to a third country or to an international organisation. However, in an exceptional case of urgency such data may be transferred exclusively for the purposes of the prevention and detection of terrorist offences and of other serious criminal offences, in which case Member States shall ensure that records are kept of such transfers and make them available to national data protection authorities on request;- the competent body or bodies, which in accordance with national law are charged with the supervision of the processing of personal data by the designated shall monitor the lawfulness of the processing of personal data and. Member States shall ensure that these bodies have sufficient resources to fulfil the tasks entrusted to them;- Parliament expanded Article 8 to include provisions on the following: data security; liability; self-monitoring; penalties; keeping of VIS data in national files; and right of access, correction and deletion. Any person has the right to have factually inaccurate data relating to him corrected or unlawfully stored data relating to him deleted;- Parliament inserted a detailed list of records that must be kept;- three years after the VIS is brought into operation and every four years thereafter, the Commission shall produce an overall evaluation of the VIS;- the Commission's proposal states that both Ireland and the United Kingdom are taking part in this Decision, in accordance with Article 5 of the Protocol integrating the Schengen acquis.  However, Parliament adopted an amendment stating that neither the UK nor Ireland are taking part and are not bound by it or subject to its application. It further stated that in accordance with Framework Decision 2006/960/JHA, information contained in the VIS can be provided to the United Kingdom and Ireland by the competent authorities of the Member States whose designated authorities have access to the VIS and information held in the national visa registers of the United Kingdom and Ireland can be provided to the competent law enforcement authorities of the other Member States. Any form of direct access for central authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland to the VIS would, under the present state of their participation in the Schengen acquis, require an Agreement between the Community and those Member States, possibly to be supplemented by other rules specifying the conditions and procedures for such access.

• 2007/06/06 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
• 2007/05/21 Committee report tabled for plenary, 1st reading/single reading
  • A6-0195/2007
• 2007/05/14 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
• #2794
• 2007/04/19 Council Meeting
  • 2794 summary

    The Mixed Committee took note of the main results of the Trialogue held between the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission on 28 March 2007 regarding a draft Regulation concerning the Visa Information System (VIS) and the exchange of data between Member States on short stay visas.The outcome of the Trialogue was encouraging and the Council Presidency informed that a first reading agreement with Parliament on the VIS Regulation would be a realistic possibility. The Presidency also informed the Council about the state of play concerning a draft Council Decision concerning access for consultation of the Visa Information System (VIS) by designated authorities of Member States and by Europol for the purposes of the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences and of other serious criminal offences.The Mixed Committee agreed on a compromise package for further negotiations with the European Parliament with a view to reaching an agreement with this institution on the two instruments as soon as possible.

• 2006/02/16 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• #2696
• 2005/12/01 Council Meeting
  • 2696
• 2005/11/24 Legislative proposal published
  • COM(2005)0600 summary

    PURPOSE : to create a legal framework establishing the conditions under which Member States’ internal security bodies and Europol may access the Visa Information System (VIS).PROPOSED ACT: Council Decision.CONTENT: this proposal complements Council Decision 2004/512, which establishes the Visa information System (VIS). The fight against terrorism is a priority for all Member States. The European Union is committed to combating terrorism and organised crime, hence the creation of the VIS. Access to information stored on the VIS could help Member State authorities’ as well as Europol to both prevent and combat terrorist acts. This present proposal has been prepared in order to clarify how and when Member States’ internal security bodies as well as Europol, can access VIS information for the dual purposes of preventing and combating terrorism and/or organised crime.The present initiative does not go beyond what is necessary to achieve its objectives. Importantly, the scope is limited to terrorist offences and to crimes for which Europol is responsible. In addition, the proposed provisions restrict the use of VIS data to specific cases only in order to exclude routine access. Only those national authorities responsible for the prevention, detection or investigation of criminal offences will have access to the VIS. Moreover, those authorities will be obliged to go through a central access point which will consult the VIS on their behalf, on a case-by-case basis and after receipt of a duly motivated request. Furthermore, the Authorities responsible for internal security are clearly listed in the Annex to this Decision, as are the Central Access Points.In presenting this proposal, the Commission emphasis that the Decision seeks to ensure full respect for the right to liberty and security, the right to respect for private and family life, the right to the protection of personal data and the principles of legality and proportionality of criminal offences and penalties.The Commission points out that the proposal fulfils both the subsidiarity and proportionality principles. The subsidiarity principle applies in this instance in that the VIS database is established under an EU framework thereby hindering individual Member States from authorising, on their own, access to it. In other words, the objectives of the Decision could not be sufficiently achieved by the Member States acting on their own. As far as the proportionality principle is concerned the initiative does not go beyond what is necessary to achieve its objective. The Decision seeks to ensure full respect for the fundamental rights and the conditions set out for access to VIS data is restricted to specific cases only – in other words routine access is not a possibility.Given that Ireland and the United Kingdom do not participate in the common visa policy and that they are not a party to the VIS Regulation, the internal security bodies of these Member States do not have direct access to the VIS. However, it is appropriate that VIS data be made available to the Irish and UK authorities. The provisions of the Decision apply to Iceland and Norway.The proposal has implications for the Community budget in so far as the additional number of access to the VIS generated by the authorities responsible for internal security via the central access points has to be taken into account when setting up and maintaining the system. The implementation of the proposed Decision would entail only a small amount of additional expenditure, to be charged to the budget of the European Communities for meetings of the secretarial services for the new committee set up by this Decision.FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:- Policy sector concerned : Justice and Home Affairs; 1806 – Establishing a genuine area of freedom, security and justice in criminal and civil matters.- Human resources and associated expenditure: EUR 1 134 000.- Administrative costs, other than human resources and associated costs not included in reference amount: EUR 246 000.- Total indicative financial costs for intervention (commitment/payment and including human resources): EUR 1 382 640. - Period of application: From 2006.- Over all total number of human resources: 1,75.- Financial cost of human resources and associated costs not included in the reference amount: EUR 189 000 per year from 2006-2011.- Other administrative expenditure not included in reference amount: EUR 41 440 per year from 2006-2011, totalling over the entire period EUR 248 640.

  • DG {'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/justice/', 'title': 'Justice'}, BARROT Jacques

Documents

• Legislative proposal published: COM(2005)0600
• Debate in Council: 2696
• Debate in Council: 2794
• Committee report tabled for plenary, 1st reading/single reading: A6-0195/2007
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Results of vote in Parliament: Results of vote in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T6-0229/2007
• : Decision 2008/633
• : OJ L 218 13.08.2008, p. 0129

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)