Informatiesamenwerking tussen nationale bureaus in Schengengebied overwogen (en)

On 16-17 October the meeting of the heads of the National Bureaux of Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry (hereinafter SIRENE) will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania. The meeting will focus on the means of ensuring the implementation of the legal measures of Schengen Information System (hereinafter SIS II) and exchange of alerts, which would guarantee reliable connection between the national and international law enforcement institutions responsible for ensuring security in the Schengen area.

In the course of the meeting the experience of the Member States, the problematic issues related to the use of the new functions of SISII, and new alert categories will be discussed. The members of the network will discuss the accomplished SIS/SIRENE evaluations, the problems detected during them, as well as the guidelines on the SIS/SIRENE future activity.

Moreover, the Lithuanian initiative on the implementation of the international sanctions while entering the identity data of the third-country citizens into SISII, the draft Conclusion of the Council, and the report on employing SISII with a view to preventing terrorism will be presented at the meeting.

The meeting will be chaired by Artūras Šimelionis - the head of the National SIRENE Bureau of International Relations Board of Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau. Among the participants of the meeting there will be the heads of the National SIRENE Bureaux from all the EU Member States, representatives from Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein, a representative of the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, representatives of the European Commission, a representative of the European Police College (CEPOL), and a representative of the Large Information Systems Agency (eu-LISA).

Schengen Information System (SIS) is a common information system of the countries members of the Schengen area which enables the law enforcement institutions of these countries to cooperate by exchanging information, to perform checks using the automated search and to get information on the warnings in relation to persons or things. This system enables every ordinary police officer, working in the office or in the car, to check if the person is wanted by law enforcement institutions of the other states and if he or she is wanted, the system indicates what measures should be taken. When a police officer enters one inquiry into the police information system, he or she immediately gets three responses from the different data bases: from the national register, SIS and the data base of Interpol.

In 2012 alone the competent institutions of Lithuania detected 1241 matches on the wanted persons and things from the foreign states, while other states detected 1123 matches on the inquiries entered into the Lithuanian SIRENE information system.