The European Parliament currently discusses 3 different reports about the Schengen Information System (SIS). Rapporteur for all three reports is Carlos Coelho. The reports aim at extending the amount of data handled and the degree of cross-linking within the computer network.

Coelho, a Portuguese Conservative, has already been the Rapporteur on four previous reports on the Schengen Information System in the last year-and-a-half. Before that, he was the chairman of the Temporary Committee on the Echelon system, and it is in part his merit that the report on the U.S.-led interception system became a call for something similar in the EU. Coelho may be considered very close to pro-surveillance circles in the Council and the Commission. For this reason, his reports should more or less reflect the positions of the officials running the SIS server in Strasbourg and its mirrors in each of the EU Member States.

One of the reports, officially an own-initiative report (Proposal for a Recommendation pursuant to Rule 49(1) of the Rules of Procedure) on behalf of the Conservative Group in the EP, deals with the schedule and capabilities of the Schengen Information System II (SIS II), which shall be installed by 2006. As a starting point, Coelho quotes from a council Document stating "When the SIS was first created, its only purpose was to be a compensatory measure for the opening of the borders. Ever since, and not in the least because the SIS has proven to be a useful and efficient tool, recognition has grown that the potential of the SIS could be maximised, mainly within the frame of police cooperation." This would probably include close links between Europol and SIS, a plan that was uncovered by the UK publication Statewatch last year.

Besides extending SIS / SIS II from a border-oriented to an all-over data warehouse - which has already been acquired in practice, Coelho and his party plan to extend capacities, scope and users of the system: "SIS II must have the potential to handle a significantly larger quantity of data and be extended to cope with new information types, new subjects, further new functions and new categories of users." He quotes from the draft conclusions of the June 5th / 6th Justice and Home Affairs Council to give a few examples of new features of the system, e.g. interlinking of alerts ('alert' is what a data record in SIS is called), including biometric data and new 'categories of persons' like 'violent troublemakers' (EU slang for persons engaged in Anti-EU Demonstrations) and 'persons precluded from leaving the Schengen area'.

Working Document on the Schengen Information System II (SIS II): current developments (timetable, new functionalities and users currently under discussion)
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/libe/20030611/499809EN....

Working Document on Schengen Information System II: future developments http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees%%%/libe/20030611/500117...

Proposal for a Recommendation pursuant to Rule 49(1) of the Rules of Procedure by Carlos Coelho on behalf of the PPE-DE Group on the second-generation Schengen information system (SIS II)
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/libe/20030611/030066en....

Statewatch: Europol to be given access to the S.I.S., then custody?
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2002/mar/15europol.htm

(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)