Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 767/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Visa Information System (VIS), the use of fingerprints at external borders and the use of biometrics in the visa application procedure / REFIT evaluation

When progressively establishing an area of freedom, security and justice, the European Union must ensure the free movement of persons and a high level of security. In this context, priority was given to developing and establishing the Visa Information System (VIS) to exchange visa data between Member States.

A comprehensive legal framework was adopted to establish the VIS:
- Council Decision 2004/512/EC of 8 June 2004 established the VIS as a system for exchanging visa data between Member States ("VIS founding Decision");
- Regulation (EC) No 767/2008 of 9 July 2008 laid down the purpose, functionalities and responsibilities of the VIS and laid down the conditions and procedures for the exchange of visa data between Member States to facilitate the examination of visa applications and related decisions ("VIS Regulation");
- Regulation (EC) No 810/2009 of 13 July 2009 set out the rules on the registration of biometric identifiers in the VIS ("Visa Code").

The VIS was also entrusted with the aim of contributing to internal security and combating terrorism. Council Decision 2008/633/JHA of 23 June 2008 consequently laid down the conditions under which Member States’ designated authorities and Europol may obtain access to consult the VIS for the purposes of preventing, detecting and investigating terrorist offences and other serious criminal offences ("VIS Law Enforcement Access (LEA) Decision).

The VIS legal framework provided for an evaluation of the implementation of the VIS Regulation and of the VIS founding Decision, as well as of the use of VIS by law enforcement authorities on the basis of the VIS Law Enforcement Access (LEA) Decision and the use of biometrics in the visa application procedure on the basis of the Visa Code.

On this basis, and considering as well the overall principles and criteria for carrying out an evaluation of EU policy instruments in the context of the Regulatory and Fitness (REFIT) programme, the Commission launched in 2015 the first evaluation of the system since its entry into operation (2011) and looked in particular at:
- the performance of the VIS as a system;
- how it has been implemented in practice;
- the extent to which it has reached its policy objectives;
- whether it is fit-for-purpose in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and added value for the EU visa policy.

The report (and the evaluation that underpins it) also assesses whether the system delivers on its objectives at reasonable cost; examines the results achieved in the light of the objectives; and examines the Member States’ implementation of the legal framework. The evaluation was performed internally by the Commission. A number of different data collection tools were used to gather information from a wide range of stakeholders. The opinions of third-country nationals and governments of countries under visa obligation were taken into account both via Member States' and the Commission's experience with rolling out and applying VIS worldwide. The report also draws on a study carried out by the Joint Research Centre on fingerprint recognition for children.

While this evaluation was based on four years of functioning of the VIS, account was taken of the fact that the VIS worldwide rollout was gradual, which means, for example, that over 50% of VIS volume of transactions comes from regions where VIS was deployed only 3-4 months before the end of the evaluation, thus only limited data and monitoring was available from those regions at the time of carrying out the evaluation. Although this can be considered a limiting factor, the available data and the evidence collected allowed drawing a number of conclusions as regards key aspects of the VIS and the evaluation questions.

In addition to presenting the main findings of the evaluation and the Commission’s views, this Report also presents a number of recommendations for next steps.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)327: Executive summary of the evaluation http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:327:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)328: Evaluation of the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 767/2008 of the European Parliament and Council concerning the Visa Information System (VIS) and the exchange of data between Member States on short-stay visas (VIS Regulation) / REFIT evaluation http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:328:FIN

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