Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the development of the Visa Information System (VIS) in 2011

The Commission, in accordance with Article 6 of Council Decision 2004/512/EC of 8 June 2004 establishing the Visa Information System, herewith submits to the Council and the European Parliament the eighth progress report on the development of the Visa Information System (VIS). The report covers the work carried out by the Commission between January and December 2011.

During the reporting period, two testing phases were successfully completed, the first of which involved seven participating countries and the second involved 16 of them (the same seven and nine additional ones). The two testing phases were completed later than originally scheduled, but still within the reporting period, due to re-runs of some tests that proved the stability and robustness of the system. In the end, both series of tests were determined to have met the contractual requirements.

The system actually started operations on 11 October 2011 in the visa-issuing consular posts of the Schengen states in North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia). On 19 December 2011, Liechtenstein joined Schengen and was successfully connected to the VIS.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)376: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:376:FIN

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