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Follow up to the ETIAS Regulation consequential amendments

In September 2018, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS.

ETIAS will be a centralised EU information system

that will pre-screen visa-exempt third country nationals travelling to the Schengen area to identify potential risks to security, illegal immigration and public health. To assess those risks, personal data

in the ETIAS applications will be compared with data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS itself, the Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System (‘EES’), Eurodac, and ECRIS-TCN in the Europol databases and in certain Interpol databases.

On 7 January 2019, the Commission published two proposals in order to establish the interoperability of ETIAS and other information systems. The first proposal concerns amendments to the law enforcement branch of SIS Regulation (Regulation 2018/1862) and ECRIS-TCN, whereas the second proposal concerns amendments to the borders branch of SIS, VIS, EES and ETIAS.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) published its formal comments on the two proposals on 13 March 2019. The EDPS stressed that using the data stored therein for border management purposes exceeds the purpose of the ECRIS-TCN and it would be difficult to reconcile with the purpose limitation principle.

In the Council, discussions among the preparatory bodies have been taking place since January 2019.The Permanent Representative Committee, on 22 May 2019, agreed on the mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament, with indicated changes to Commission proposals.

In the European Parliament, both files have been assigned to the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). Being of the view that an impact assessment is necessary, on 4 October 2019, the LIBE Committee requested the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) to conduct a targeted substitute impact assessment.

The substitute impact assessment was published on 20 December 2019. The trilogues on these files should start as soon as the European Parliament adopt its mandate for negotiations.

On 7 December 2020, the LIBE Committee decided to open interinstitutional negotiations. Consequently, the Committee’s report for both files was tabled and voted in plenary on 17 December and a first political trilogue could take place on 13 January, a second on 11 February 2021 and a third on 25 February 2021. A fourth political trialogue took place on 18 March 2021, at which political agreemen was reached following the completion of a technical-level work.

On 31 March 2021 the Permanent Representatives Committee decided on the final compromise text and transfered the files to the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament.

On 7 July 2021 three regulations establishing the conditions for accessing other EU information systems for the purposes of ETIAS were formally adopted.


type: Proposal for a regulation

Reference number: COM(2019)4 final

Issue date: 07-01-19

Link: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CONSIL:ST_5072_2019_INIT&from=EN