Dimitris Avramopoulos, Member of the Commission. Schengen is a great achievement of European integration. In order to ensure that the Schengen area of free movement is sustainable and secure, it is essential that we manage, protect and secure our external borders effectively and that we have full knowledge of who is coming in. Its overall objectives are to improve the management of external borders, to prevent irregular migration and to facilitate the management of migration flows.
It will enhance cooperation and facilitate information exchange between our Member States. This new instrument will bring several urgently needed improvements. First of all, it will enable us to monitor better the rules on short stays. Visitors to the European Union will benefit from process accelerators and self-service systems.
For the border guards it will mean more time to focus on the most important parts of the border-check assessments. That is also why the Schengen Borders Code had to be amended.
In addition, Member States may also create national facilitation programmes on a voluntary basis to further facilitate border crossings of pre—vetted frequent travellers. The compromise proposed describes the conditions these programmes must meet.
Fourth, this system will support the competent authorities in combating terrorism and serious crimes. When necessary, these authorities will be able to access data in the system if all strict conditions are met. Lastly, the provisions on data protection are aligned to the new data protection framework and to the rulings of the Court of Justice. The current text includes all the necessary data protection safeguards. The coming into force of the legislation will be timely, so we can rapidly start to develop the system and get it up and running by at the latest.
