Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, cooperation under Schengen started in 1985 between five Member States. The idea was to abolish internal borders so as to allow the free movement of persons and to adopt compensatory measures, including measures concerning police cooperation, the fight against drugs, extradition and the creation of the Schengen Information System. All the Member States now belong to Schengen, although the United Kingdom and Ireland only partially participate. In addition, two non-member countries also participate, namely Iceland and Norway, which belong to the Nordic Passport Union. With the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Schengen acquis has been integrated into the treaties and there has been a communitarisation of certain third pillar issues, which have been transferred to the Community pillar. This applies, for example, to visas, asylum, immigration and judicial cooperation on civil matters. In the process of preparing this report, I had to deal with a number of issues which I would like to see resolved as quickly as possible. The first of these is extension to include the remaining Member States. Whilst welcoming the extension of the Schengen area, the European Parliament regrets the fact that it has not been sufficiently well informed or even formally consulted on the changes that have taken place in this area. We see the partial participation of the United Kingdom and Ireland, which we regard as a positive development, as being a provisional situation and a step towards full participation. Secondly, there is a lack of transparency. Everyone hoped that the integration of the Schengen acquis would lead to a considerable improvement in transparency. However, the results have been disappointing. To be precise, the acquis was published late and not in full, and, paradoxically, the European Parliament now receives less information on Schengen than it used to receive when Schengen was of a clearly intergovernmental nature. Thirdly, there is the issue of the integration of the acquis in the treaties. This could have facilitated significant progress, but it has had a chaotic and incoherent impact, partly due perhaps to the power of initiative conferred on the Member States. On the other hand, due to the restrictive interpretation of the treaty provisions by the Council, Parliament has been unable, under the third pillar, to participate more fully in the legislative process. Fourthly, there is what I might call the ‘perversion of Schengen’. Article 2(2) allows any Member State to unilaterally re-impose internal border controls for reasons of public order or national security. This has already been put into practice by France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and most recently by Italy. We are not opposed to what might be called ‘safety valves’. We are all aware, especially at present, that greater freedom has to be matched by greater security. However, it has to be said that the absence of a legal framework making clear under what conditions and in what terms this article can be invoked makes this a real blank cheque. Accordingly, bearing in mind the scoreboard, I urge the Commission to bring forward a formal proposal including legislative provisions relating to prior agreement by the Council, approval for a limited period, a requirement for proportionality, and conditions for extending the period. My fifth point concerns Schengen cooperation and police cooperation. Schengen cooperation is distinct from police cooperation, with the development of Europol being a separate matter. However, these two sets of legislative provisions, which are considered in isolation and which lend greater weight to the issue of the confidentiality of documents, mean that the area of criminal matters and security has become even less transparent and more confusing for the public. As part of the third pillar, parliamentary and judicial checks on increased cooperation between the Member States are still inadequate and need to be reinforced. My sixth point is the extension of the Schengen area to the candidate countries. This extension will significantly change the shape of Europe and the new Member States will become responsible for controlling the thousands of kilometres of new external borders of the European Union. The process of checking compliance with Schengen has taken a considerable amount of time for the existing Member States. I therefore believe that a two-phase approach is required: the first stage being the acceptance of the acquis upon joining the Union, and the second stage being full implementation of the acquis, with borders being lifted as soon as circumstances allow. The seventh point is the Schengen Information System, the SIS. The SIS is the biggest database in Europe and the first experiment in terms of a large-scale exchange of sensitive data at international level. In practice, it is hoped that in the long term it will become a European information system. The SIS cannot continue to be managed secretly on a purely intergovernmental basis. Instead it should be managed on a Community basis, with the task of managing it being entrusted to an independent agency over which this Parliament should have a control function; it should be financed from the EU budget and provision should be made for a Community information system, which by keeping the data separate, could contain data collected under various agreements. Mr President, I would like to conclude by thanking all those fellow Members who have assisted with the preparation of this report, and in particular Mrs Van Lancker for her help with the various compromise amendments.

Political group: PPE-DE