Visa Information System (VIS)

Key points

The EESC:

• supports a visa policy that is and should remain a tool to facilitate tourism and business, while preventing security risks and the risk of irregular migration to the EU;
• supports the further development of the Visa Information System (VIS) as the best technological solution facilitating the short-stay visa procedure and helping visa, border, asylum and migration authorities to rapidly and effectively check the necessary information on third-country nationals who need a visa to travel to the EU;
• considers that one key objective of action in this field should be the harmonisation of EU Member State procedures, practices and outcomes with regard to visa policy;
• supports the objective of making it easier to identify missing persons. However, lowering the fingerprinting age for child applicants from 12 years to 6 years can be problematic. The proposal did not include input and opinions from child protection agencies and organisations, preventing the EESC from fully assessing the impact of the proposal on children and their protection;
• stresses the importance of strict access conditions as regards the objective to allow national law enforcement authorities and Europol to access VIS data for law enforcement purposes. Access should ideally require court decisions which would ensure that such access is a necessary limitation of the protection of personal data principle;
• points out that the proposal would have benefitted from more detailed and specific data on the short- and long-stay visas and residence permits, country by country, of both EU Member States and third countries;
• recommends a more solid commitment to work with the governments and civil society of the third countries in order to inform, prepare and assist their nationals throughout the visa application procedure.