EU justice ministers consider police access to Visa Information System

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 23rd Feb 2005

European Justice Ministers meeting in Brussels tomorrow and Friday will consider various aspects of the proposed Visa Information System (VIS)*, including whether police and intelligence agencies should have access to the VIS database.

Baroness Sarah Ludford, London MEP and European justice spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats is the European Parliament's rapporteur on the VIS, on which the Parliament has co-decision powers giving it equal weight in decisions on this legislation. She said:

"We need to be very careful about 'function creep'. While the proposal from the European includes 'prevention of threats to internal security' as one of the aims of the system, this only means the security aspects of visa issue, not law enforcement in general."

"It would be a whole new ballgame to grant police and intelligence agents access to data meant for immigration and border control authorities, and one with worrying implications."

The Council is also due to decide to press ahead faster than envisaged on the incorporation of biometric data in the VIS. This is because the original idea, to put biometric data first in chips on visa and residence permit 'stickers' in passports, has had to be abandoned. Over a year after the Commission proposed this, it was discovered that there would be a 'collision' problem of interference between various chips.

Sarah Ludford said: "There ought to be some very red faces that the technical problems were discovered so late in the day. It does not inspire confidence in the rest of the system!"

"I intend to make use of the equal legislative power between Parliament and Council to exercise full and detailed scrutiny over the VIS proposal, including the need for, amount of, and access to sensitive data such as fingerprints. Governments cannot just decide to hijack the system as a national policing tool, with no data protection rules at EU level."

Ends

Note: The Commission proposed a Regulation for a Visa Information System (VIS) in December 2004, which would be a system for the exchange between EU Member States of alphanumeric (e.g. name and date of birth) and biometric (e.g. fingerprints and facial scans) data from visa applicants, to enhance the coherence and security of Schengen area border controls. The UK and Ireland would have only limited access, as non-Schengen members.