Mr President, according to the report, this modest proposal is aimed, of course, at combating fraud and the illegal trade in stolen motor vehicles, and the means to be used is increased access to the Schengen Information System. I quote the report: ‘[The proposal] will make the SIS an even more prominent instrument to fight crime and... [promote] work towards the progressive establishment of the area of freedom, security and justice.’ Despite this, the legal basis for the proposal is transport policy – to which I am returning – namely Article 71. It pains me to say it, Commissioner and Mr Coelho, but this is a legal and juridico-political farce. I shall confine my remarks to three points. First, regarding the Schengen project in general, which of course constitutes the most extensive system in world history of supervision and political and social control. From annual reports and surveys, we know that, in 2001, the Schengen Information System’s database contained more than ten million individual pieces of information. This most recently published figure is undoubtedly much larger today. Anyone with the slightest sense of justice must pose the following questions: Who may record what? Who may retrieve which information, and how may the information be used? A reading of the texts supplies no certain answers. The criteria are so elastic that it really is up to the system’s many users to define the limits; and the many users amount to approximately 125 000 terminals connected to the central database in Strasbourg. What, for example, is the meaning of Article 96 where, according to one of the conditions, people’s presence is assumed to constitute a threat to public order. Such uncertain criteria require thoroughgoing controls, but the system offers no real controls. What is termed the Joint Supervisory Authority has, in several annual reports, expressed its lack of ability to function independently. The working conditions are so poor that the Supervisory Authority has declared that its supervision functions as an alibi for the use of police instruments. The Supervisory Authority possesses neither the independence nor the resources necessary for the system to function effectively and affords only modest guarantees in connection with the collection and exchange of information that takes place in the SIS and the even more advanced SIRNE system. This is the general background to the proposal, which is an extension of Schengen cooperation. I turn now to my two supplementary questions to the acting Commissioner. The legal basis that I mentioned earlier completes the farce. It is Article 71, which deals with transport policy. It is absurd, regardless of the legal technicalities referred to by the Commission. Finally, in my own little country, Denmark, we have a special regulation pertaining to the extension of Schengen cooperation or the Schengen regulations. How does the Danish protocol work in this area, Commissioner? The mysterious legal basis is possibly the explanation of why the Danish Council representative, with whom I talked today, simply declared himself unfamiliar with the proposal. No wonder, either, if the proposal is camouflaged as transport policy.

Political group: GUE-NGL