The Schengen Information System (SIS), is a governmental database used by European countries to maintain and distribute information on individuals and pieces of property of interest. The intended uses of this system are for national security, border control and law enforcement purposes. A second technical version of this system, SIS II, is currently under development for 2013, under the responsibility of the European Commission.
Information in SIS is shared among institutions of the participating countries in the Schengen Agreement Application Convention (SAAC). The five original participating countries were France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Twenty additional countries have joined the system since its creation: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Currently, the Schengen Information System is used by 27 countries. Among the current participants, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland are not members of the European Union.
Although the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom have not signed the Schengen Agreement Application Convention, they take part in Schengen co-operation under the terms of the Treaty of Amsterdam, which introduced the provisions of Schengen Acquis into the European Union. Schengen Acquis allows the United Kingdom and Ireland to take part in all or part of the Schengen convention arrangements. Ireland and the United Kingdom use the Schengen Information System for law enforcement purposes. They do not have access to the Article 26D (former 96) data, because they do not intend to remove the border controls between themselves and the rest of Europe. European citizens still have the right of free movement to the UK, but they must pass through a border control point, unlike in the rest of the Schengen signatory countries, where internal border controls have been largely abolished.
Read more about Schengen Information System: General Description, History
Famous quotes containing the words information and/or system:
“Rejecting all organs of information ... but my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Social and scientific progress are assured, sir, once our great system of postpossession payments is in operation, not the installment plan, no sir, but a system of small postpossession payments that clinch the investment. No possible rational human wish unfulfilled. A man with a salary of fifty dollars a week can start payments on a Rolls-Royce, the Waldorf-Astoria, or a troupe of trained seals if he so desires.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)