Germany to press for entry-exit registry in Schengen area

There are ‘too many gaps’ in the Schengen area’s borders, says Thomas de Maizière.

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BERLIN – Germany will push for speedy introduction of an entry-exit registry for third-country travelers into the Schengen area at Thursday’s emergency meeting of the EU interior and justice ministers following ISIL attacks in the Belgian capital.

“At the external borders of the Schengen area, there are too many gaps,” Thomas de Maizière said in an interview with national broadcaster ARD. “We need an entry and exit registry for the Schengen area.”

Although EU member states issue visas for citizens of third countries entering Schengen, there is no centralised database that would register those crossing in and out all 26 Schengen member states.

EU leaders have been discussing a tracking mechanism on Schengen’s borders since 2008, when the European Commission first issued a proposal for it. Concerns over personal data protection rights have prevailed and postponed any decision on moving ahead with it.

A registration office could only be established if the Commission proved that a database was necessary to achieve a legitimate goal. As a huge advocate of the personal data protection right, Germany has been particularly critical of collecting and storing data at Schengen borders.

In 2013, an attempt by de Maizière’s predecessor, Hans-Peter Friedrich, to push for it was thwarted by the liberal FDP, the CDU’s then-coalition partner, which held the justice ministry at the time.

With the justice ministry now headed by Heiko Maas, a Social Democrat who has already indicated support for de Maizière’s plan, it appears likely that Germany could now push for the establishment of a Schengen registry at the meeting in Brussels.

An interior ministry spokesperson said during a government press conference on Wednesday that “the interior minister will do everything so that [the introduction of an entry-exit registry] will happen quickly.”

According to de Maizière’s previous suggestion, the registry would link three of the existing databases: the Schengen Information System (SIS,) the European fingerprint database for identifying asylum seekers and irregular border-crossers (Eurodac) and the Schengen Visa Information System (VIS.)

“We want to know who are the people entering the Schengen area, and when they leave it. That is what we are working on currently,” de Maizière told Die Welt newspaper in mid-March.