0
0
Border management: Commission welcomes political agreement towards making European Travel Information and Authorisation System operational
The Commission welcomes today’s political agreement between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on making the future European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) interoperable with other EU information systems. This is an important step towards the entry into operation of the system by the end of 2022.
The agreement contributes to the EU’s ongoing work to put in place a state-of-the-art external border management system and making sure that information systems work together in an intelligent and targeted way.
Once ETIAS is in place, non-EU citizens travelling to the Schengen area who are exempt from the visa requirement will need to register and obtain an authorisation before travelling. The system will cross-check travellers against EU information systems for borders, security and migration before their trip, helping to identify ahead of time people who may pose a risk to security or health, as well as compliance with migration rules.
Today’s agreement details how ETIAS will work with other EU information systems it will query when conducting checks, namely the Entry/Exit System, the Visa Information System, the Schengen Information System and a centralised system for the identification of Member States holding conviction information on non-EU nationals. This includes the purpose of the queries, the data to be used for such queries and provisions for granting the ETIAS central and national units with the necessary access rights, in full respect of fundamental rights including personal data protection. A press release is available online.
