Article 1 Subject matter
1. This Regulation establishes a ‘European Travel Information and Authorisation System’ (ETIAS) for third-country nationals exempt from the requirement to be in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders (‘the visa requirement’) enabling consideration of whether the presence of those third-country nationals in the territory of the Member States would pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk. For this purpose, a travel authorisation and the conditions and procedures to issue or refuse it are introduced. 2. This Regulation lays down the conditions under which Member States’ designated authorities and Europol may consult data stored in the ETIAS Central System for the purposes of the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences falling under their competence. 3. By storing identity data and travel document data in the common identity repository (CIR) established by Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/817 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 1 ), ETIAS contributes to facilitating and assisting in the correct identification of persons registered in ETIAS under the conditions and for the purposes of Article 20 of that Regulation.
Article 2 Scope
1. This Regulation applies to the following categories of third-country nationals: (a) nationals of third countries listed in Annex II to Council Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 ( 2 ) who are exempt from the visa requirement for intended stays in the territory of the Member States of a duration of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period; persons who, pursuant to Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 539/2001, are exempt from the visa requirement for intended stays in the territory of the Member States of a duration of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period; third-country nationals who are exempt from the visa requirement and who fulfil the following conditions: (i) they are family members of a Union citizen to whom Directive 2004/38/EC applies or of a national of a third country enjoying the right of free movement equivalent to that of Union citizens under an agreement between the Union and its Member States on the one hand and a third country on the other; and (ii) they do not hold a residence card pursuant to Directive 2004/38/EC or a residence permit pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002. 2. This Regulation does not apply to: (a) refugees or stateless persons or other persons who do not hold the nationality of any country who reside in a Member State and who are holders of a travel document issued by that Member State; (b) third-country nationals who are family members of a Union citizen to whom Directive 2004/38/EC applies and who hold a residence card pursuant to that Directive; (c) third-country nationals who are family members of a third-country national enjoying a right of free movement equivalent to that of Union citizens, under an agreement between the Union and its Member States on the one hand and a third country on the other, and who hold a residence card pursuant to Directive 2004/38/EC or a residence permit pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002; (d) holders of residence permits referred to in point 16 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (e) holders of uniform visas; (f) holders of national long-stay visas; (g) nationals of Andorra, Monaco and San Marino and holders of a passport issued by the Vatican City State or the Holy See; (h) nationals of third countries who are holders of a local border traffic permit issued by the Member States pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1931/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 3 ) when such holders exercise their right within the context of the Local Border Traffic regime; (j) third-country nationals holding diplomatic or service passports who have been exempted from the visa requirement pursuant to an international agreement concluded by the Union and a third country; persons who are subject to a visa requirement pursuant to Article 4(3) of Regulation (EC) No 539/2001; (l) third-country nationals exercising their right to mobility in accordance with Directive 2014/66/EU ( 4 ) or (EU) 2016/801 ( 5 ) of the European Parliament and of the Council.
Article 3 Definitions
1. For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply: (1) ‘external borders’ means the external borders as defined in point 2 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (2) ‘law enforcement’ means the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences or other serious criminal offences; (3) ‘second line check’ means a second line check as defined in point 13 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (4) ‘border authority’ means the border guard assigned in accordance with national law to carry out border checks as defined in point 11 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (a) that no factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk; (b) that no factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk, although doubt remains concerning the existence of sufficient reasons to refuse the travel authorisation, in accordance with Article 36(2); (c) where factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk, that the territorial validity of the authorisation has been limited in accordance with Article 44; or (d) where factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security risk, that the traveller is the subject of an alert in SIS on persons for discreet checks or specific checks or of an alert in SIS on persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of an European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes, in support of the objectives of SIS referred to in point (e) of Article 4; (6) ‘security risk’ means the risk of a threat to public policy, internal security or international relations for any of the Member States; (7) ‘illegal immigration risk’ means the risk of a third-country national not fulfilling the conditions of entry and stay as set out in Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (8) ‘high epidemic risk’ means any disease with epidemic potential as defined by the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization (WHO) or the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and other infectious diseases or contagious parasitic diseases if they are the subject of protection provisions applying to nationals of the Member States; (9) ‘applicant’ means any third-country national referred to in Article 2 who has submitted an application for a travel authorisation; (10) ‘travel document’ means a passport or other equivalent document entitling the holder to cross the external borders and to which a visa may be affixed; ‘short stay’ means stays in the territory of the Member States within the meaning of Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (12) ‘overstayer’ means a third-country national who does not fulfil, or no longer fulfils the conditions relating to the duration of a short stay on the territory of the Member States; (13) ‘app for mobile devices’ means a software application designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers; (14) ‘hit’ means the existence of a correspondence established by comparing the personal data recorded in an application file of the ETIAS Central System with the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33 or with the personal data present in a record, file or alert registered in the ETIAS Central System, in another EU information system or database listed in Article 20(2) (‘EU information systems’), in Europol data or in an Interpol database queried by the ETIAS Central System; (15) ‘terrorist offence’ means an offence which corresponds or is equivalent to one of the offences referred to in Directive (EU) 2017/541; (16) ‘serious criminal offence’ means an offence which corresponds or is equivalent to one of the offences referred to in Article 2(2) of Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA, if it is punishable under national law by a custodial sentence or a detention order for a maximum period of at least three years; (18) ‘electronically signed’ means the confirmation of agreement through the ticking of an appropriate box in the application form or the request for consent; (19) ‘minor’ means a third-country national or a stateless person below the age of 18 years; (20) ‘consulate’ means a Member State’s diplomatic mission or a Member State’s consular post as defined by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 24 April 1963; (21) ‘designated authority’ means an authority designated by a Member State pursuant to Article 50 as responsible for the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences; ‘immigration authority’ means the competent authority responsible, in accordance with national law, for one or more of the following: (a) checking within the territory of the Member States whether the conditions for entry to, or stay on, the territory of the Member States are fulfilled; examining the conditions for, and taking decisions related to, the residence of third-country nationals on the territory of the Member States insofar as that authority does not constitute a ‘determining authority’ as defined in point (f) of Article 2 of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 6 ), and, where relevant, providing advice in accordance with Council Regulation (EC) No 377/2004 ( 7 ); (c) the return of third-country nationals to a third country of origin or transit; ‘CIR’ means the common identity repository established by Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/817; ‘ESP’ means the European search portal established by Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/817; ‘ETIAS Central System’ means the Central System referred to in point (a) of Article 6(2) together with the CIR to the extent that the CIR contains the data referred to in Article 6(2a); (27) ‘travel document data’ means the data referred to in points (d) and (e) of Article 17(2) and the three letter code of the country issuing the travel document as referred to in point (c) of Article 19(3). 2. The terms defined in Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and eu-LISA. 3. The terms defined in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the authorities of Member States for the purposes laid down in points (a) to (e) of Article 4 of this Regulation. 4. The terms defined in Article 3 of Directive (EU) 2016/680 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the authorities of the Member States for the purposes laid down in point (f) of Article 4 of this Regulation.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 3 Definitions):
For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply: (1) ‘external borders’ means the external borders as defined in point 2 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (2) ‘law enforcement’ means the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences or other serious criminal offences; (3) ‘second line check’ means a second line check as defined in point 13 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (4) ‘border authority’ means the border guard assigned in accordance with national law to carry out border checks as defined in point 11 of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (a) that no factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk; (b) that no factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk, although doubt remains concerning the existence of sufficient reasons to refuse the travel authorisation, in accordance with Article 36(2); (c) where factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security, illegal immigration or high epidemic risk, that the territorial validity of the authorisation has been limited in accordance with Article 44; or (d) where factual indications have been identified to consider that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses or will pose a security risk, that the traveller is the subject of an alert in SIS on persons for discreet checks or specific checks or of an alert in SIS on persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of an European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes, in support of the objectives of SIS referred to in point (e) of Article 4; (6) ‘security risk’ means the risk of a threat to public policy, internal security or international relations for any of the Member States; (7) ‘illegal immigration risk’ means the risk of a third-country national not fulfilling the conditions of entry and stay as set out in Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (8) ‘high epidemic risk’ means any disease with epidemic potential as defined by the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization (WHO) or the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and other infectious diseases or contagious parasitic diseases if they are the subject of protection provisions applying to nationals of the Member States; (9) ‘applicant’ means any third-country national referred to in Article 2 who has submitted an application for a travel authorisation; (10) ‘travel document’ means a passport or other equivalent document entitling the holder to cross the external borders and to which a visa may be affixed; ‘short stay’ means stays in the territory of the Member States within the meaning of Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/399; (12) ‘overstayer’ means a third-country national who does not fulfil, or no longer fulfils the conditions relating to the duration of a short stay on the territory of the Member States; (13) ‘app for mobile devices’ means a software application designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers; (14) ‘hit’ means the existence of a correspondence established by comparing the personal data recorded in an application file of the ETIAS Central System with the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33 or with the personal data present in a record, file or alert registered in the ETIAS Central System, in another EU information system or database listed in Article 20(2) (‘EU information systems’), in Europol data or in an Interpol database queried by the ETIAS Central System; (15) ‘terrorist offence’ means an offence which corresponds or is equivalent to one of the offences referred to in Directive (EU) 2017/541; (16) ‘serious criminal offence’ means an offence which corresponds or is equivalent to one of the offences referred to in Article 2(2) of Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA, if it is punishable under national law by a custodial sentence or a detention order for a maximum period of at least three years; (18) ‘electronically signed’ means the confirmation of agreement through the ticking of an appropriate box in the application form or the request for consent; (19) ‘minor’ means a third-country national or a stateless person below the age of 18 years; (20) ‘consulate’ means a Member State’s diplomatic mission or a Member State’s consular post as defined by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 24 April 1963; (21) ‘designated authority’ means an authority designated by a Member State pursuant to Article 50 as responsible for the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences; ‘immigration authority’ means the competent authority responsible, in accordance with national law, for one or more of the following: (a) checking within the territory of the Member States whether the conditions for entry to, or stay on, the territory of the Member States are fulfilled; examining the conditions for, and taking decisions related to, the residence of third-country nationals on the territory of the Member States insofar as that authority does not constitute a ‘determining authority’ as defined in point (f) of Article 2 of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 6 ), and, where relevant, providing advice in accordance with Council Regulation (EC) No 377/2004 ( 7 ); (c) the return of third-country nationals to a third country of origin or transit; ‘CIR’ means the common identity repository established by Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/817; ‘ESP’ means the European search portal established by Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/817; ‘ETIAS Central System’ means the Central System referred to in point (a) of Article 6(2) together with the CIR to the extent that the CIR contains the data referred to in Article 6(2a); (28) ‘other EU information systems’ means the Entry/Exit System (‘EES’), established by Regulation (EU) 2017/2226, the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), established by Regulation (EC) No 767/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 8 ), the Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), established by Regulations (EU) 2018/1860 ( 9 ), (EU) 2018/1861 ( 10 ) and (EU) 2018/1862 ( 11 ) of the European Parliament and of the Council, Eurodac, established by Regulation (EU) No 603/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 12 ) and the European Criminal Record Information System – Third-Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’), established by Regulation (EU) 2019/816 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 13 ) 2. The terms defined in Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and eu-LISA. 3. The terms defined in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the authorities of Member States for the purposes laid down in points (a) to (e) of Article 4 of this Regulation. 4. The terms defined in Article 3 of Directive (EU) 2016/680 shall have the same meaning in this Regulation insofar as personal data are processed by the authorities of the Member States for the purposes laid down in point (f) of Article 4 of this Regulation.
Article 4 Objectives of ETIAS
By supporting the competent authorities of the Member States, ETIAS shall: (a) contribute to a high level of security by providing for a thorough security risk assessment of applicants, prior to their arrival at external border crossing points, in order to determine whether there are factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications to conclude that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses a security risk; (b) contribute to the prevention of illegal immigration by providing for an illegal immigration risk assessment of applicants prior to their arrival at external border crossing points; (c) contribute to the protection of public health by providing for an assessment of whether the applicant poses a high epidemic risk within the meaning of point 8 of Article 3(1) prior to his or her arrival at external border crossing points; (d) enhance the effectiveness of border checks; (e) support the objectives of SIS related to alerts on third-country nationals subject to a refusal of entry and stay, alerts on persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes or extradition purposes, alerts on missing persons, alerts on persons sought to assist with a judicial procedure and alerts on persons for discreet checks or specific checks; (f) contribute to the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences; (g) contribute to the correct identification of persons.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 4 Objectives of ETIAS):
By supporting the competent authorities of the Member States, ETIAS shall: (a) contribute to a high level of security by providing for a thorough security risk assessment of applicants, prior to their arrival at external border crossing points, in order to determine whether there are factual indications or reasonable grounds based on factual indications to conclude that the presence of the person on the territory of the Member States poses a security risk; (b) contribute to the prevention of illegal immigration by providing for an illegal immigration risk assessment of applicants prior to their arrival at external border crossing points; (c) contribute to the protection of public health by providing for an assessment of whether the applicant poses a high epidemic risk within the meaning of point 8 of Article 3(1) prior to his or her arrival at external border crossing points; (d) enhance the effectiveness of border checks; (e) support the objectives of SIS related to alerts on third-country nationals subject to a refusal of entry and stay, alerts on persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes or extradition purposes, alerts on missing persons, alerts on persons sought to assist with a judicial procedure, alerts on persons for discreet checks or specific checks and alerts on third-country nationals subject to a return decision; (ea) support the objectives of the EES; (f) contribute to the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences; (g) contribute to the correct identification of persons.
Article 5 General structure of ETIAS
ETIAS consists of: (a) the ETIAS Information System as referred to in Article 6; (b) the ETIAS Central Unit as referred to in Article 7; (c) the ETIAS National Units as referred to in Article 8.
Article 6 Establishment and technical architecture of the ETIAS Information System
1. The European Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice (‘eu-LISA’) shall develop the ETIAS Information System and ensure its technical management. 2. The ETIAS Information System shall be composed of: (a) a Central System, including the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34; (aa) the CIR; a national uniform interface (NUI) in each Member State based on common technical specifications and identical for all Member States enabling the ETIAS Central System to connect to the national border infrastructures and to the central access points in Member States referred to in Article 50(2) in a secure manner; (c) a communication infrastructure between the ETIAS Central System and the NUIs which shall be secure and encrypted; (d) a secure communication infrastructure between the Central System and the central infrastructures of the ESP and the CIR; (e) a public website and an app for mobile devices; (f) an email service; (g) a secure account service enabling applicants to provide any additional information or documentation required; (h) a verification tool for applicants; (i) a tool enabling applicants to give or withdraw their consent for an additional retention period of their application file; (j) a tool enabling Europol and Member States to assess the potential impact of entering new data into the ETIAS watchlist on the proportion of applications that are manually processed; (k) a carrier gateway; (l) a secure web service enabling the ETIAS Central System to communicate with the public website, the app for mobile devices, the email service, the secured account service, the carrier gateway, the verification tool for applicants, the consent tool for applicants, the payment intermediary and the Interpol databases; (m) software enabling the ETIAS Central Unit and the ETIAS National Units to process applications and to manage consultations with other ETIAS National Units as referred to in Article 28 and with Europol as referred to in Article 29; (n) a central repository of data for the purposes of reporting and statistics. 2a. The CIR shall contain the identity data and travel document data. The remaining data shall be stored in the Central System. 3. The ETIAS Central System, the NUIs, the web service, the carrier gateway and the communication infrastructure of ETIAS shall to the extent technically possible share and re-use the hardware and software components of the EES Central System, of the EES National Uniform Interfaces, of the EES web service and of the EES Communication Infrastructure referred to in Regulation (EU) 2017/2226. 4. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 in order to define the requirements of the secure account service referred to in point (g) of paragraph 2 of this Article.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 6 Establishment and technical architecture of the ETIAS Information System):
1. The European Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice (‘eu-LISA’) shall develop the ETIAS Information System and ensure its technical management. The ETIAS Information System shall be composed of: (a) a Central System, including the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34; (aa) the CIR; a national uniform interface (NUI) in each Member State based on common technical specifications and identical for all Member States enabling the ETIAS Central System to connect to the national border infrastructures and to the central access points in Member States referred to in Article 50(2) in a secure manner; (c) a communication infrastructure between the ETIAS Central System and the NUIs which shall be secure and encrypted; (d) a secure communication infrastructure between the Central System and the central infrastructures of the ESP and the CIR; (da) a secure communication channel between the ETIAS Central System and the EES Central System; (e) a public website and an app for mobile devices; (f) an email service; (g) a secure account service enabling applicants to provide any additional information or documentation required; (h) a verification tool for applicants; (i) a tool enabling applicants to give or withdraw their consent for an additional retention period of their application file; (j) a tool enabling Europol and Member States to assess the potential impact of entering new data into the ETIAS watchlist on the proportion of applications that are manually processed; (k) a carrier gateway; (l) a secure web service enabling the ETIAS Central System to communicate with the public website, the app for mobile devices, the email service, the secured account service, the carrier gateway, the verification tool for applicants, the consent tool for applicants, the payment intermediary and the Interpol databases; (m) software enabling the ETIAS Central Unit and the ETIAS National Units to process applications and to manage consultations with other ETIAS National Units as referred to in Article 28 and with Europol as referred to in Article 29; (n) a central repository of data for the purposes of reporting and statistics. 2a. The CIR shall contain the identity data and travel document data. The remaining data shall be stored in the Central System. 3. The ETIAS Central System, the NUIs, the web service, the carrier gateway and the communication infrastructure of ETIAS shall to the extent technically possible share and re-use the hardware and software components of the EES Central System, of the EES National Uniform Interfaces, of the EES web service and of the EES Communication Infrastructure referred to in Regulation (EU) 2017/2226. 4. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 in order to define the requirements of the secure account service referred to in point (g) of paragraph 2 of this Article.
Article 7 ETIAS Central Unit
1. An ETIAS Central Unit is hereby established within the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. 2. The ETIAS Central Unit shall be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It shall have the following responsibilities: (a) in cases where the automated application process has reported a hit, verifying in accordance with Article 22 whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data of the person having triggered that hit in the ETIAS Central System, including the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34, any of the EU information systems that are consulted, Europol data, any of the Interpol databases referred to in Article 12, or the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33, and where a correspondence is confirmed or where doubts remain, launching the manual processing of the application as referred to in Article 26; (b) ensuring that the data it enters in the applications files are up to date in accordance with the relevant provisions of Articles 55 and 64; (c) defining, establishing, assessing ex ante , implementing, evaluating ex post , revising and deleting the specific risk indicators as referred to in Article 33 after consultation of the ETIAS Screening Board; (d) ensuring that the verifications performed in accordance with Article 22 and the corresponding results are recorded in the application files; (e) carrying out regular audits of the processing of applications and of the implementation of Article 33, including by regularly assessing their impact on fundamental rights, in particular with regard to privacy and personal data protection; (f) indicating, where necessary, the Member State responsible for the manual processing of applications as referred to in Article 25(2); (g) in cases of technical problems or unforeseen circumstances, facilitating where necessary the consultations between Member States referred to in Article 28 and between the Member State responsible and Europol referred to in Article 29; (h) notifying carriers in cases of a failure of the ETIAS Information System as referred to in Article 46(1); (i) notifying the ETIAS National Units of the Member States of a failure of the ETIAS Information System as referred to in Article 48(1); (j) processing requests for consultation of data in the ETIAS Central System by Europol as referred to in Article 53; (k) providing the general public with all relevant information in relation to the application for a travel authorisation as referred to in Article 71; (l) cooperating with the Commission as regards the information campaign referred to in Article 72; (m) providing support in writing to travellers who have encountered problems when filling in the application form and have requested assistance through a standard contact form; maintaining a list of frequent questions and answers available online; (n) ensuring follow-up and regularly reporting to the Commission on reported abuses by commercial intermediaries as referred to in Article 15(5). 3. The ETIAS Central Unit shall publish an annual activity report. That report shall include: statistics on: (i) the number of travel authorisations issued automatically by the ETIAS Central System; (ii) the number of applications verified by the ETIAS Central Unit; (iii) the number of applications processed manually per Member State; (iv) the number of applications that were refused by third country and the grounds for the refusal; (v) the extent to which the deadlines referred to in Article 22(6) and Articles 27, 30 and 32 have been met. (b) general information on the functioning of the ETIAS Central Unit, its activities as set out in this Article and information on current trends and challenges affecting the conduct of its tasks. The annual activity report shall be transmitted to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission by 31 March of the following year.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 7 ETIAS Central Unit):
1. An ETIAS Central Unit is hereby established within the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The ETIAS Central Unit shall be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It shall have the following responsibilities: (a) in cases where the automated application process has reported a hit, verifying in accordance with Article 22 whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data of the person having triggered that hit in the ETIAS Central System, any of the EU information systems that are consulted, Europol data, any of the Interpol databases referred to in Article 12, or the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33, and where a correspondence is confirmed or where after such verification doubts remain, launching the manual processing of the application as referred to in Article 26; (b) ensuring that the data it enters in the applications files are up to date in accordance with the relevant provisions of Articles 55 and 64; (c) defining, establishing, assessing ex ante , implementing, evaluating ex post , revising and deleting the specific risk indicators as referred to in Article 33 after consultation of the ETIAS Screening Board; (d) ensuring that the verifications performed in accordance with Article 22 and the corresponding results are recorded in the application files; (e) carrying out regular audits of the processing of applications and of the implementation of Article 33, including by regularly assessing their impact on fundamental rights, in particular with regard to privacy and personal data protection; (f) indicating, where necessary, the Member State responsible for the manual processing of applications as referred to in Article 25(2); (g) in cases of technical problems or unforeseen circumstances, facilitating where necessary the consultations between Member States referred to in Article 28 and between the Member State responsible and Europol referred to in Article 29; (h) notifying carriers in cases of a failure of the ETIAS Information System as referred to in Article 46(1); (i) notifying the ETIAS National Units of the Member States of a failure of the ETIAS Information System as referred to in Article 48(1); (j) processing requests for consultation of data in the ETIAS Central System by Europol as referred to in Article 53; (k) providing the general public with all relevant information in relation to the application for a travel authorisation as referred to in Article 71; (l) cooperating with the Commission as regards the information campaign referred to in Article 72; (m) providing support in writing to travellers who have encountered problems when filling in the application form and have requested assistance through a standard contact form; maintaining a list of frequent questions and answers available online; (n) ensuring follow-up and regularly reporting to the Commission on reported abuses by commercial intermediaries as referred to in Article 15(5). The ETIAS Central Unit shall publish an annual activity report. That report shall include: statistics on: (i) the number of travel authorisations issued automatically by the ETIAS Central System; (ii) the number of applications verified by the ETIAS Central Unit; (iii) the number of applications processed manually per Member State; (iv) the number of applications that were refused by third country and the grounds for the refusal; (v) the extent to which the deadlines referred to in Article 22(6) and Articles 27, 30 and 32 have been met. (b) general information on the functioning of the ETIAS Central Unit, its activities as set out in this Article and information on current trends and challenges affecting the conduct of its tasks. The annual activity report shall be transmitted to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission by 31 March of the following year. 4. The ETIAS Central Unit shall provide periodical reports to the Commission and eu-LISA concerning false hits as referred to in Article 22(4) which are generated during the automated verifications pursuant to Article 20(2).
Article 8 ETIAS National Units
1. Each Member State shall designate a competent authority as the ETIAS National Unit. 2. The ETIAS National Units shall be responsible for: (a) examining and deciding on applications for travel authorisation where the automated application process has reported a hit and the manual processing of the application has been initiated by the ETIAS Central Unit; (b) ensuring that the tasks performed under point (a) and the corresponding results are recorded in the application files; (c) ensuring that the data they enter in the application files are up to date in accordance with the relevant provisions of Articles 55 and 64; (d) deciding to issue travel authorisations with limited territorial validity as referred to in Article 44; (e) ensuring coordination with other ETIAS National Units and Europol concerning the consultation requests referred to in Articles 28 and 29; (f) providing applicants with information regarding the procedure to be followed in the event of an appeal under Article 37(3); (g) annulling and revoking a travel authorisation as referred to in Articles 40 and 41. 3. Member States shall provide the ETIAS National Units with adequate resources for them to fulfil their tasks in accordance with the deadlines set out in this Regulation.
Article 9 ETIAS Screening Board
1. An ETIAS Screening Board with an advisory function is hereby established within the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. It shall be composed of a representative of each ETIAS National Unit, of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and of Europol. 2. The ETIAS Screening Board shall be consulted: (a) by the ETIAS Central Unit on the definition, establishment, assessment ex ante , implementation, evaluation ex post , revision and deletion of the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33; (b) by Member States on the implementation of the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34; (c) by Europol on the implementation of the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34. 3. The ETIAS Screening Board shall issue opinions, guidelines, recommendations and best practices for the purposes referred to in paragraph 2. When issuing recommendations, the ETIAS Screening Board shall take into consideration the recommendations issued by the ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board. 4. The ETIAS Screening Board shall meet whenever necessary, and at least twice a year. The costs and servicing of its meetings shall be borne by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. 5. The ETIAS Screening Board may consult the ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board on specific issues related to fundamental rights, in particular with regard to privacy, personal data protection and non-discrimination. 6. The ETIAS Screening Board shall adopt rules of procedure at its first meeting by a simple majority of its members.
Article 10 ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board
1. An independent ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board with an advisory and appraisal function is hereby established. Without prejudice to their respective competences and independence, it shall be composed of the Fundamental Rights Officer of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, a representative of the consultative forum on fundamental rights of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, a representative of the European Data Protection Supervisor, a representative of the European Data Protection Board established by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and a representative of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. 2. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall perform regular appraisals and issue recommendations to the ETIAS Screening Board on the impact on fundamental rights of the processing of applications and of the implementation of Article 33, in particular with regard to privacy, personal data protection and non-discrimination. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall also support the ETIAS Screening Board in the execution of its tasks when consulted by the latter on specific issues related to fundamental rights, in particular with regard to privacy, personal data protection and non-discrimination. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall have access to the audits referred to in point (e) of Article 7(2). 3. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall meet whenever necessary, and at least twice a year. The costs and servicing of its meetings shall be borne by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. Its meetings shall take place in premises of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The secretariat of its meetings shall be provided by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall adopt rules of procedure at its first meeting by a simple majority of its members. 4. One representative of the ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall be invited to attend the meetings of the ETIAS Screening Board in an advisory capacity. The members of the ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall have access to the information and files of the ETIAS Screening Board. 5. The ETIAS Fundamental Rights Guidance Board shall produce an annual report. The report shall be made publicly available.
Article 11 Interoperability with other EU information systems
1. Interoperability between the ETIAS Information System, other EU information systems and Europol data shall be established to enable the verification referred to in Article 20. 2. The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system.
Article 12 Querying the Interpol databases
The ETIAS Central System shall query the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (SLTD) and the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (TDAWN). Any queries and verification shall be performed in such a way that no information shall be revealed to the owner of the Interpol alert.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 12 Querying the Interpol databases):
1. The ETIAS Central System shall query the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (SLTD) and the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (TDAWN). 2. Any queries and verification shall be performed in such a way that no information is revealed to the owner of the Interpol alert. 3. If the implementation of paragraph 2 is not ensured, the ETIAS Central System shall not query the Interpol databases.
Article 13 Access to data stored in ETIAS
1. Access to the ETIAS Information System shall be reserved exclusively for duly authorised staff of the ETIAS Central Unit and of the ETIAS National Units. 2. Access by border authorities to the ETIAS Central System in accordance with Article 47 shall be limited to searching the ETIAS Central System to obtain the travel authorisation status of a traveller present at an external border crossing point and to the data referred to in points (a), (c) and (d) of Article 47(2). In addition, border authorities shall be informed automatically of the flags referred to in Article 36(2) and (3) and of the reasons for the flags. When exceptionally, according to a flag, a second line check is recommended at the border or additional verifications are needed for the purpose of a second line check, border authorities shall access the ETIAS Central System to obtain the additional information provided for in point (e) of Article 39(1) or point (f) of Article 44(6). 3. Access by carriers to the ETIAS Information System in accordance with Article 45 shall be limited to sending queries to the ETIAS Information System to obtain the travel authorisation status of a traveller. 4. Access by immigration authorities to the ETIAS Central System in accordance with Article 49 shall be limited to obtaining the travel authorisation status of a traveller present on the territory of the Member State, and to certain data as referred to in that Article. Access by immigration authorities to the ETIAS Central System in accordance with Article 65(3) shall be limited to the data referred to in that Article. 4a. Access to the ETIAS identity data and travel document data stored in the CIR shall also be reserved exclusively for the duly authorised staff of the national authorities of each Member State and for the duly authorised staff of the Union agencies that are competent for the purposes laid down in Article 20 and Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2019/817. Such access shall be limited according to the extent that the data are required for the performance of their tasks for those purposes, and proportionate to the objectives pursued. 5. Each Member State shall designate the competent national authorities referred to in paragraphs 1, 2, 4 and 4a of this Article and shall communicate a list of these authorities to eu-LISA without delay, in accordance with Article 87(2). That list shall specify for which purpose the duly authorised staff of each authority shall have access to the data in ETIAS Information System in accordance with paragraphs 1, 2, 4 and 4a of this Article.
Article 14 Non-discrimination and fundamental rights
Processing of personal data within the ETIAS Information System by any user shall not result in discrimination against third-country nationals on the grounds of sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation. It shall fully respect human dignity and integrity and fundamental rights, including the right to respect for one’s private life and to the protection of personal data. Particular attention shall be paid to children, the elderly and persons with a disability. The best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
Article 15 Practical arrangements for submitting an application
1. Applicants shall submit an application by filling in the online application form via the dedicated public website or via the app for mobile devices sufficiently in advance of any intended travel, or, if they are already present on the territory of Member States, before the expiry of an existing travel authorisation they hold. 2. Holders of a travel authorisation may submit an application for a new travel authorisation from 120 days before the expiry of the travel authorisation. 120 days before the expiry of the travel authorisation, the ETIAS Central System shall automatically inform the holder of that travel authorisation via the email service of: (a) the expiry date of the travel authorisation; (b) the possibility to submit an application for a new travel authorisation; (c) the obligation to be in possession of a valid travel authorisation for the entire duration of a short stay on the territory of Member States. 3. All notifications to the applicant for the purpose of his or her application for a travel authorisation shall be sent to the email address provided by the applicant in the application form as referred to in point (g) of Article 17(2). 4. Applications may be submitted by the applicant or by a person or a commercial intermediary authorised by the applicant to submit the application on his or her behalf. 5. The Commission shall, by means of an implementing act, create a form allowing abuses by the commercial intermediaries referred to in paragraph 4 of this Article to be reported. This form shall be made accessible via the dedicated public website or via the app for mobile devices referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article. Such completed forms shall be sent to the ETIAS Central Unit which shall take appropriate action, including by regularly reporting to the Commission. That implementing act shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 90(2).
Article 16 The public website and the app for mobile devices
1. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall enable third-country nationals subject to the travel authorisation requirement to submit a travel authorisation application, to provide the data required in the application form in accordance with Article 17 and to pay the travel authorisation fee. 2. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall make the application form widely available and easily accessible to applicants free of charge. Specific attention shall be paid to the accessibility of the public website and the app for mobile devices for persons with disabilities. 3. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall be available in all the official languages of the Member States. 4. Where the official language(s) of the countries listed in Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 do not correspond to the languages referred to in paragraph 3, factsheets with explanatory information concerning ETIAS, the application procedure, the use of the public website and the app for mobile devices as well as a step-by-step guide to the application shall be made available by eu-LISA on the public website and on the app for mobile devices in at least one of the official languages of the countries referred to. Where any such country has more than one official language, such factsheets shall only be necessary if none of those languages correspond to the languages referred to in paragraph 3. 5. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall inform applicants of the languages which may be used when filling in the application form. 6. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall provide the applicant with an account service enabling applicants to provide additional information or documentation, where required. 7. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall inform applicants of their right to an appeal under this Regulation if a travel authorisation is refused, revoked or annulled. To this end, they shall contain information about the national law applicable, the competent authority, how to lodge an appeal, the time limit for lodging an appeal and information as to any assistance that may be provided by the national data protection authority. 8. The public website and the app for mobile devices shall enable applicants to indicate that the purpose of their intended stay relates to humanitarian grounds or international obligations. 9. The public website shall contain the information referred to in Article 71. 10. The Commission shall, by means of implementing acts, adopt detailed rules on the operation of the public website and the app for mobile devices, and detailed rules on data protection and security applicable to the public website and the app for mobile devices. Those detailed rules shall be based on information security risk management and on principles of data protection by design and by default. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 90(2).
Article 17 Application form and personal data of the applicant
1. Each applicant shall submit a completed application form including a declaration of the authenticity, completeness, correctness and reliability of the data submitted and a declaration of the veracity and reliability of the statements made. Each applicant shall also state that he or she has understood the conditions for entry referred to in Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399 and that he or she may be requested to provide the relevant supporting documents at each entry. Minors shall submit an application form electronically signed by a person exercising permanent or temporary parental authority or legal guardianship. 2. The applicant shall provide the following personal data in the application form: surname (family name), first name(s) (given name(s)), surname at birth; date of birth, place of birth, sex, current nationality; (aa) country of birth, first name(s) of the parents of the applicant; (c) other nationalities, if any; (d) type, number and country of issue of the travel document; (e) the date of issue and the date of expiry of the validity of the travel document; (f) the applicant’s home address or, if not available, his or her city and country of residence; (g) email address and, if available, phone numbers; (h) education (primary, secondary, higher or none); (i) current occupation (job group); where the application is subject to the manual processing in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26, the Member State responsible may in accordance with Article 27 request that the applicant provide additional information concerning his or her exact job title and employer or, for students, the name of their educational establishment; (j) Member State of first intended stay, and optionally, the address of first intended stay; (k) for minors, surname and first name(s), home address, email address and, if available, phone number of the person exercising parental authority or of the applicant’s legal guardian; where he or she claims the status of family member referred to in point (c) of Article 2(1): (i) his or her status of family member; (ii) the surname, first name(s), date of birth, place of birth, country of birth, current nationality, home address, email address and, if available, phone number of the family member with whom the applicant has family ties; (iii) his or her family ties with that family member in accordance with Article 2(2) of Directive 2004/38/EC; (m) in the case of applications filled in by a person other than the applicant, the surname, first name(s), name of firm, organisation if applicable, email address, mailing address and phone number if available of that person; relationship to the applicant and a signed representation declaration. 3. The applicant shall choose his or her current occupation (job group) from a predetermined list. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to lay down this predetermined list. 4. In addition, the applicant shall provide answers to the following questions: (a) whether he or she has been convicted of any criminal offence listed in the Annex over the previous 10 years and in the case of terrorist offences, over the previous 20 years, and if so when and in which country; (b) whether he or she has stayed in a specific war or conflict zone over the previous 10 years and the reasons for the stay; (c) whether he or she has been the subject of any decision requiring him or her to leave the territory of a Member State or of any third countries listed in Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 or whether he or she was subject to any return decision issued over the previous 10 years. 5. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 specifying the content and format of the questions referred to in paragraph 4 of this Article. The content and format of those questions shall enable applicants to give clear and precise answers. 6. Where the applicant answers affirmatively to any of the questions referred to in paragraph 4, he or she shall be required to provide answers to an additional set of predetermined questions on the application form by selecting from a predetermined list of answers. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to lay down the content and format of those additional questions and the predetermined list of answers to those questions. 7. The data referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 shall be introduced by the applicant in Latin alphabet characters. 8. On submission of the application form, the ETIAS Information System shall collect the IP address from which the application form was submitted. 9. The Commission shall, by means of implementing acts, define the requirements concerning the format of the personal data referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 of this Article to be inserted in the application form as well as parameters and verifications to be implemented for ensuring the completeness of the application and the coherence of those data. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 90(2).
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 17 Application form and personal data of the applicant):
1. Each applicant shall submit a completed application form including a declaration of the authenticity, completeness, correctness and reliability of the data submitted and a declaration of the veracity and reliability of the statements made. Each applicant shall also state that he or she has understood the conditions for entry referred to in Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399 and that he or she may be requested to provide the relevant supporting documents at each entry. Minors shall submit an application form electronically signed by a person exercising permanent or temporary parental authority or legal guardianship. The applicant shall provide the following personal data in the application form: surname (family name), first name(s) (given name(s)), surname at birth; date of birth, place of birth, sex, current nationality; (aa) country of birth, first name(s) of the parents of the applicant; (c) other nationalities, if any; (d) type, number and country of issue of the travel document; (e) the date of issue and the date of expiry of the validity of the travel document; (f) the applicant’s home address or, if not available, his or her city and country of residence; (g) email address and, if available, phone numbers; (h) education (primary, secondary, higher or none); (i) current occupation (job group); where the application is subject to the manual processing in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26, the Member State responsible may in accordance with Article 27 request that the applicant provide additional information concerning his or her exact job title and employer or, for students, the name of their educational establishment; (j) Member State of first intended stay, and optionally, the address of first intended stay; (k) for minors, surname and first name(s), home address, email address and, if available, phone number of the person exercising parental authority or of the applicant’s legal guardian; where he or she claims the status of family member referred to in point (c) of Article 2(1): (i) his or her status of family member; (ii) the surname, first name(s), date of birth, place of birth, country of birth, current nationality, home address, email address and, if available, phone number of the family member with whom the applicant has family ties; (iii) his or her family ties with that family member in accordance with Article 2(2) of Directive 2004/38/EC; (m) in the case of applications filled in by a person other than the applicant, the surname, first name(s), name of firm, organisation if applicable, email address, mailing address and phone number if available of that person; relationship to the applicant and a signed representation declaration. 3. The applicant shall choose his or her current occupation (job group) from a predetermined list. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to lay down this predetermined list. In addition, the applicant shall provide answers to the following questions: (a) whether he or she has been convicted in the previous 25 years of a terrorist offence or in the previous 15 years of any other criminal offence listed in the Annex, and if so when and in which country; (b) whether he or she has stayed in a specific war or conflict zone over the previous 10 years and the reasons for the stay; (c) whether he or she has been the subject of any decision requiring him or her to leave the territory of a Member State or of any third countries listed in Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 539/2001 or whether he or she was subject to any return decision issued over the previous 10 years. 5. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 specifying the content and format of the questions referred to in paragraph 4 of this Article. The content and format of those questions shall enable applicants to give clear and precise answers. 6. Where the applicant answers affirmatively to any of the questions referred to in paragraph 4, he or she shall be required to provide answers to an additional set of predetermined questions on the application form by selecting from a predetermined list of answers. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 to lay down the content and format of those additional questions and the predetermined list of answers to those questions. 7. The data referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 shall be introduced by the applicant in Latin alphabet characters. 8. On submission of the application form, the ETIAS Information System shall collect the IP address from which the application form was submitted. 9. The Commission shall, by means of implementing acts, define the requirements concerning the format of the personal data referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 of this Article to be inserted in the application form as well as parameters and verifications to be implemented for ensuring the completeness of the application and the coherence of those data. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 90(2).
Article 18 Travel authorisation fee
1. A travel authorisation fee of EUR 7 shall be paid by the applicant for each application. 2. The travel authorisation fee shall be waived for applicants under 18 years or above 70 years of age at the time of the application. 3. The travel authorisation fee shall be charged in euros. 4. The Commission shall adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 89 on the payment methods and process for the travel authorisation fee and on changes to the amount of that fee. Changes to the amount shall take into account any increase in the costs referred to in Article 85.
Article 19 Admissibility and creation of the application file
1. The ETIAS Information System shall automatically verify whether, following submission of an application: all the fields of the application form are filled in and contain all the items referred to in Article 17(2) and (4); (b) the travel authorisation fee has been collected. 2. If the conditions in points (a) and (b) of paragraph 1 are met, the application shall be deemed admissible. The ETIAS Central System shall then automatically create an application file without delay and assign it an application number. 3. Upon creation of the application file, the ETIAS Central System shall record and store the following data: (a) the application number; (b) status information, indicating that a travel authorisation has been requested; (d) the data referred to in Article 17(8); (e) the date and the time the application form was submitted as well as a reference to the successful payment of the travel authorisation fee and the unique reference number of the payment. 5. Upon creation of the application file, the applicant shall immediately receive a notification via the email service explaining that, during the processing of the application, the applicant may be asked to provide additional information or documentation or, in exceptional circumstances, attend an interview. This notification shall include: (a) status information, acknowledging the submission of an application for travel authorisation; and The notification shall enable the applicant to make use of the verification tool provided for in point (h) of Article 6(2).
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 19 Admissibility and creation of the application file):
The ETIAS Information System shall automatically verify whether, following submission of an application: all the fields of the application form are filled in and contain all the items referred to in Article 17(2) and (4); (b) the travel authorisation fee has been collected. 2. If the conditions in points (a) and (b) of paragraph 1 are met, the application shall be deemed admissible. The ETIAS Central System shall then automatically create an application file without delay and assign it an application number. Upon creation of the application file, the ETIAS Central System shall record and store the following data: (a) the application number; (b) status information, indicating that a travel authorisation has been requested; (d) the data referred to in Article 17(8); (e) the date and the time the application form was submitted as well as a reference to the successful payment of the travel authorisation fee and the unique reference number of the payment. 5. Upon creation of the application file, the applicant shall immediately receive a notification via the email service explaining that, during the processing of the application, the applicant may be asked to provide additional information or documentation or, in exceptional circumstances, attend an interview. This notification shall include: (a) status information, acknowledging the submission of an application for travel authorisation; and (b) the application number. Upon creation of the application file, the applicant shall immediately receive a notification via the email service explaining that, during the processing of the application, the applicant may be asked to provide additional information or documentation or, in exceptional circumstances, attend an interview. This notification shall include: (a) status information, acknowledging the submission of an application for travel authorisation; and The notification shall enable the applicant to make use of the verification tool provided for in point (h) of Article 6(2).
Article 20 Automated processing
1. The application files shall be automatically processed by the ETIAS Central System to identify hit(s). The ETIAS Central System shall examine each application file individually. In particular, the ETIAS Central System shall verify: (a) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document reported lost, stolen, misappropriated or invalidated in SIS; (b) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document reported lost, stolen or invalidated in the SLTD; (c) whether the applicant is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS; (d) whether the applicant is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (e) whether the applicant and the travel document correspond to a refused, revoked or annulled travel authorisation in the ETIAS Central System; whether the data provided in the application concerning the travel document correspond to another application for travel authorisation associated with different identity data referred to in point (a) of Article 17(2) in the ETIAS Central System; (g) whether the applicant is currently reported as an overstayer or whether he or she has been reported as an overstayer in the past in the EES; (h) whether the applicant is recorded as having been refused entry in the EES; (i) whether the applicant has been subject to a decision to refuse, annul or revoke a short stay visa recorded in VIS; (j) whether the data provided in the application correspond to data recorded in Europol data; (k) whether the applicant is registered in Eurodac; (l) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document recorded in a file in TDAWN; in cases where the applicant is a minor, whether the applicant’s parental authority or legal guardian: (i) is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (ii) is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS. in cases where the applicant is a minor, whether the applicant’s parental authority or legal guardian: (i) is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (ii) is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS. 3. The ETIAS Central System shall verify whether the applicant has replied affirmatively to any of the questions listed in Article 17(4) and whether the applicant has not provided a home address but only his city and country of residence, as referred to in point (f) of Article 17(2). 4. The ETIAS Central System shall compare the relevant data referred to in points (a), (aa), (b), (c), (d), (f), (g), (j), (k) and (m) of Article 17(2) and in Article 17(8) to the data present in the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34. 5. The ETIAS Central System shall compare the relevant data referred to in points (a), (aa), (c), (f), (h) and (i) of Article 17(2) to the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33. 6. The ETIAS Central System shall add a reference to any hit obtained pursuant to paragraphs 2 to 5 to the application file. 7. Where the data recorded in the application file correspond to the data triggering a hit pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 4, the ETIAS Central System shall identify, where relevant, the Member State(s) that entered or supplied the data having triggered the hit and shall record this in the application file. 8. Following any hit pursuant to paragraph 2(j) and paragraph 4 and where no Member State had supplied the data having triggered the hit, the ETIAS Central System shall identify whether Europol entered the data and shall record this in the application file.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 20 Automated processing):
1. The application files shall be automatically processed by the ETIAS Central System to identify hit(s). The ETIAS Central System shall examine each application file individually. (a) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document reported lost, stolen, misappropriated or invalidated in SIS; (b) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document reported lost, stolen or invalidated in the SLTD; (c) whether the applicant is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS; (d) whether the applicant is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (e) whether the applicant and the travel document correspond to a refused, revoked or annulled travel authorisation in the ETIAS Central System; whether the data provided in the application concerning the travel document correspond to another application for travel authorisation associated with different identity data referred to in point (a) of Article 17(2) in the ETIAS Central System; (g) whether the applicant is currently reported as an overstayer or whether he or she has been reported as an overstayer in the past in the EES; (h) whether the applicant is recorded as having been refused entry in the EES; (i) whether the applicant has been subject to a decision to refuse, annul or revoke a short stay visa recorded in VIS; (j) whether the data provided in the application correspond to data recorded in Europol data; (k) whether the applicant is registered in Eurodac; (l) whether the travel document used for the application corresponds to a travel document recorded in a file in TDAWN; in cases where the applicant is a minor, whether the applicant’s parental authority or legal guardian: (i) is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (ii) is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS; in cases where the applicant is a minor, whether the applicant’s parental authority or legal guardian: (i) is subject to an alert in respect of persons wanted for arrest for surrender purposes on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant or wanted for arrest for extradition purposes in SIS; (ii) is subject to a refusal of entry and stay alert entered in SIS; (o) whether the applicant is subject to an alert on return entered in SIS. 3. The ETIAS Central System shall verify whether the applicant has replied affirmatively to any of the questions listed in Article 17(4) and whether the applicant has not provided a home address but only his city and country of residence, as referred to in point (f) of Article 17(2). 4. The ETIAS Central System shall compare the relevant data referred to in points (a), (aa), (b), (c), (d), (f), (g), (j), (k) and (m) of Article 17(2) and in Article 17(8) to the data present in the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34. 5. The ETIAS Central System shall compare the relevant data referred to in points (a), (aa), (c), (f), (h) and (i) of Article 17(2) to the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33. 6. The ETIAS Central System shall add a reference to any hit obtained pursuant to paragraphs 2 to 5 to the application file. 7. Where the data recorded in the application file correspond to the data triggering a hit pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 4, the ETIAS Central System shall identify, where relevant, the Member State(s) that entered or supplied the data having triggered the hit and shall record this in the application file. 8. Following any hit pursuant to paragraph 2(j) and paragraph 4 and where no Member State had supplied the data having triggered the hit, the ETIAS Central System shall identify whether Europol entered the data and shall record this in the application file.
Article 21 Results of the automated processing
1. Where the automated processing laid down in Article 20(2) to (5) does not report any hit, the ETIAS Central System shall automatically issue a travel authorisation in accordance with Article 36 and shall notify the applicant in accordance with Article 38. 2. Where the automated processing laid down in Article 20(2) to (5) reports one or several hits, the application shall be processed in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 22. 3. Where verification under Article 22 confirms that the data recorded in the application file correspond to the data triggering a hit during the automated processing pursuant to Article 20(2) to (5) or where doubts remain concerning the identity of the applicant following such verification, the application shall be processed in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26. 4. Where automated processing under Article 20(3) reports that the applicant has replied affirmatively to any of the questions listed in Article 17(4), and if there is no other hit, the application shall be sent to the ETIAS National Unit of the Member State responsible, for manual processing as set out in Article 26.
Article 22 Verification by the ETIAS Central Unit
1. Where the automated processing pursuant to Article 20(2) to (5) reports one or several hits the ETIAS Central System shall automatically consult the ETIAS Central Unit. 3. The ETIAS Central Unit shall verify whether the data recorded in the application file correspond to one or more of the following: (a) the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33; (b) the data present in the ETIAS Central System, including the ETIAS watchlist referred to in Article 34; (c) the data present in one of the EU information systems that are consulted; (d) Europol data; (e) the data present in the Interpol SLTD or TDAWN databases. 4. Where the data do not correspond, and no other hit has been reported during automated processing pursuant to Article 20(2) to (5), the ETIAS Central Unit shall delete the false hit from the application file and the ETIAS Central System shall automatically issue a travel authorisation in accordance with Article 36. 5. Where the data correspond to those of the applicant or where doubts remain concerning the identity of the applicant, the application shall be processed manually in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26. 6. The ETIAS Central Unit shall complete the manual processing within a maximum of 12 hours from receipt of the application file.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 22 Verification by the ETIAS Central Unit):
1. Where the automated processing pursuant to Article 20(2) to (5) reports one or several hits the ETIAS Central System shall automatically consult the ETIAS Central Unit. The ETIAS Central Unit shall verify whether the data recorded in the application file correspond to one or more of the following: (a) the specific risk indicators referred to in Article 33; (b) the data present in the ETIAS Central System; (c) the data present in one of the EU information systems that are consulted; (d) Europol data; (e) the data present in the Interpol SLTD or TDAWN databases. 4. Where the data do not correspond, and no other hit has been reported during automated processing pursuant to Article 20(2) to (5), the ETIAS Central Unit shall delete the false hit from the application file and the ETIAS Central System shall automatically issue a travel authorisation in accordance with Article 36. 5. Where the data correspond to those of the applicant, where doubts remain concerning the identity of the applicant or where the automated verifications pursuant to Article 20(4) have reported a hit, the application shall be processed manually in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 26. 6. The ETIAS Central Unit shall complete the manual processing within a maximum of 12 hours from receipt of the application file. 7. The ETIAS Information System shall keep records of all data processing operations carried out by the ETIAS Central Unit for the purpose of verification under paragraphs 2 to 6. Those records shall be created and entered automatically in the application file. They shall show the date and time of each operation, the data linked to the hit reported, the staff member having performed the manual processing under paragraphs 2 to 6 and the outcome of the verification and the corresponding justification.
Article 23 Support of the objectives of SIS
(a) an alert on missing persons; (b) an alert on persons sought to assist with a judicial procedure; (c) an alert on persons for discreet checks or specific checks. 2. Where the comparison referred to in paragraph 1 reports one or several hits, the ETIAS Central System shall send an automated notification to the ETIAS Central Unit. The ETIAS Central Unit shall verify whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data contained in the alert having triggered that hit and if a correspondence is confirmed, the ETIAS Central System shall send an automated notification to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert. The SIRENE Bureau concerned shall further verify whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data contained in the alert having triggered the hit and take any appropriate follow-up action. The ETIAS Central System shall also send an automated notification to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert having triggered a hit against SIS during the automated processing referred to in Article 20 where, following verification by the ETIAS Central Unit as referred to in Article 22, that alert has led to manual processing of the application in accordance with Article 26. 3. The notification provided to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert shall contain the following data: surname(s), first name(s) and, if any, alias(es); (b) place and date of birth; (c) sex; (d) nationality and, if any, other nationalities; (e) Member State of first intended stay, and if available, the address of first intended stay; (f) the applicant’s home address or, if not available, his or her city and country of residence; (g) travel authorisation status information, indicating whether a travel authorisation has been issued, refused or whether the application is subject to manual processing pursuant to Article 26; (h) a reference to any hits obtained in accordance with paragraphs 1 and 2, including the date and time of the hit. 4. The ETIAS Central System shall add a reference to any hit obtained pursuant to paragraph 1 to the application file.
Amendment rationale: CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL Reasons for and objectives of the proposal In September 2018, the Council and the European Parliament adopted two legislative acts, a Regulation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (‘ETIAS’) 1 and an amendment of the Europol Regulation for the purpose of establishing ETIAS 2 . Establishing ETIAS is among efforts undertaken in recent years at EU level to enhance the security of citizens and prevent irregular migration in an open Europe, securing and continuing to strengthen the management of external borders 3 , 4 . The context and the establishment of the system were announced in the 2016 State of the Union speech. President Juncker said: ‘ We will defend our borders […] with strict controls […] on everyone crossing them. Every time someone enters or exits the EU, there will be a record of when, where and why. In November [2016] we will propose a European travel information and authorisation system – an automated system to determine who will be allowed to travel to Europe. That way we will know who is travelling to Europe before they even get here ” . ETIAS will fill the information gap on travellers exempt from the requirement of being in possession of a visa when crossing the external borders. ETIAS will determine the eligibility of visa-exempt third-country nationals prior to their travel to the Schengen Area and whether such travel poses a security, irregular migration or high epidemic risk. ETIAS will also give travellers confidence that they would be able to cross the borders smoothly. If needed, ETIAS travel authorisation could be denied by ETIAS National Units. The assessment of such risks will involve automated processing of personal data provided in the applications for travel authorisation. The ETIAS Regulation establishes that personal data in the applications will be compared with the data present in records, files or alerts registered in EU information systems or databases (the ETIAS Central System, Schengen Information System (‘SIS’), the Visa Information System (‘VIS’), the Entry/Exit System ‘(EES’) or Eurodac), in Europol data or in the Interpol databases (the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (‘SLTD’) or the Interpol Travel Documents Associated with Notices database (‘TDAWN’)) 5 . While the Regulation defines in its Article 20 which group of data from the ETIAS application files can be used to consult the other systems, not all those data are collected or recorded in the same way in the other EU information systems and Europol data. For instance in one of the systems, ‘country of issue of the travel document’ is collected while in another the same data is recorded in another way, e.g. as ‘three letter code of the issuing country of the travel document’. In other instances, a category of data is collected in one system but not in the other. For instance, ‘first names of parents of applicants’ are collected by ETIAS, but not in most of the other systems to be queried by ETIAS. Also at the time the ETIAS proposal 6 was adopted, the situation as regards the different EU information systems to be queried by ETIAS was different from today. At the time the ETIAS proposal was adopted, two other new EU information technology systems had been proposed to be set up: discussions were ongoing on the EES Regulation 7 while the Commission’s proposal on the European Criminal Records Information System – Third Country Nationals (‘ECRIS-TCN’) 8 was just about to be proposed. As regards existing information systems, the legal texts of the SIS were evolving due to the proposed revisions to the SIS legal framework in December 2016, finally adopted by co-legislators in November 2018 9 . The recast of the Eurodac Regulation 10 had also been proposed by the Commission as part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System, but had not yet been adopted by co-legislators 11 . The recast Eurodac Regulation still remains to be adopted by co-legislators today. Based on these considerations, the ETIAS Regulation stipulates, in its Article 11(2) that: “The amendments to the legal acts establishing the EU information systems that are necessary for establishing their interoperability with ETIAS as well as the addition of corresponding provisions in this Regulation shall be the subject of a separate legal instrument”. The present proposal therefore aims to set out the technical amendments necessary to fully set up the ETIAS system by amending the legal acts of the EU information technology systems ETIAS queries. The present proposal also sets out coresponding provisions and amends the ETIAS Regulation accordingly. First, the present initiative sets out amendments to the Regulation on ECRIS-TCN, on which recently, an ‘agreement in principle’ was found by the co-legislators. Thus, in line with the intention expressed by co-legislators in the ETIAS Regulation 12 it is now possible to include in ETIAS the necessary provisions on the relationship between ETIAS and ECRIS-TCN and to amend ECRIS-TCN accordingly. Secondly, the present initiative also aims to establish the relations between ETIAS and the SIS. The revised SIS legal framework has been adopted in November 2018. The present proposal includes consequential amendments resulting from the adoption of the new SIS Regulations. In line with the new SIS legal framework it is proposed to include the new alert category on inquiry checks 13 for the assessment of applications. It is not proposed to include the alert category on return decisions as such alerts are erased at the moment a return decision is implemented. This means that persons that apply for an ETIAS authorisation after having left the EU will – by definition – not have a return record in the SIS. Thirdly, the present initiative seeks to amend the EES Regulation to establish technically its relationship with ETIAS. Fourthly, the initiative also aims at amending the VIS Regulation in order to allow VIS to receive, process and answer ETIAS queries. Although in May 2018, the Commission presented a proposal to amend the VIS Regulation in order to upgrade that database, the present initiative puts forward amendments to the VIS Regulation currently in force, as the negotiations on the proposal for the upgraded VIS are not sufficiently advanced. However, if the proposal to amend the VIS Regulation were to be adopted first, it could become necessary to introduce some technical changes in the present proposal to align it with the amended version of the VIS Regulation. If the present proposal is adopted first, some technical changes could be required in the proposal amending the VIS Regulation before its adoption. In addition, following the adoption of both the EES Regulation and ETIAS Regulation, it is now required to align the way EES and ETIAS are working together on the way EES and VIS are integrated for the purpose of border control process and registration of border crossings in EES. This will rationalise and simplify the work of border guards through the implementation of a more uniform border control process for all third-country national entering for a short stay. The present initiative however does not include the amendments related to Eurodac, the EU asylum and irregular migration database, given that discussions have not yet been concluded on the May 2016 legislative proposal to strengthen Eurodac 14 . Furthermore, the data available in the current Eurodac are not sufficient for ETIAS purposes, given that the existing Eurodac only stores biometric data and a reference number, but no other personal data (e.g. name(s), age, date of birth) that would allow for contributing to the objectives of ETIAS. The May 2016 legislative proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation seeks to extend the purpose of the database to the identification of illegally staying third-country nationals and those who have entered the EU irregularly. In particular, it provides for the storage of personal data such as the name(s), age, date of birth, nationality, and identity documents. These identity data are essential to ensure that Eurodac will be able to contribute to the objectives of ETIAS. Once the co-legislators reach political agreement on the recast Eurodac Regulation, the recast Eurodac Regulation will need to be supplemented with the necessary amendments to connect Eurodac to ETIAS. Additionally, once the co-legislators adopt the Commission’s legislative proposals 15 for the interoperability of information systems for security, border and migration management, and following political agreement on the proposal for a recast Eurodac Regulation, the Commission will apply the same approach with regards to the necessary amendments to make Eurodac part of the interoperability of information systems . Finally, in line with the April 2016 Communication on "Smarter Information Systems for borders and security", ETIAS is to be built based on a re-use of hardware and software components developed for the EES 16 . This is also the approach followed by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems 17 . The technical development of the common identity repository and the European search portal as foreseen by the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems would be developed on the basis of the EES/ETIAS components. This proposal therefore presents amendments to the ETIAS Regulation to specify that the ETIAS Central System would build upon the EES Central System’s hardware and software components in order to establish a shared identity repository for the storage of the identity alphanumeric data of both ETIAS applicants and third-country nationals registered in EES. This shared identity repository would be the basis for the implementation of the common identity repository once the co-legislators adopt the legislative proposals on the interoperability of information systems. Moreover, during a transitional period, before the European search portal is available, the automated processing of ETIAS applications would rely on a tool, which would be used as the basis for the development and implementation of the European search portal. Due to the variable geometry in Member States' participation in EU policies in the area of freedom, security and justice, it is necessary to adopt two separate legal instruments which will nonetheless work seamlessly together to enable the comprehensive operation and use of the system. 
Revised version (Article 23 Support of the objectives of SIS):
(a) an alert on missing persons; (b) an alert on persons sought to assist with a judicial procedure; (c) an alert on persons for discreet checks, inquiry checks or specific checks. 2. Where the comparison referred to in paragraph 1 reports one or several hits, the ETIAS Central System shall send an automated notification to the ETIAS Central Unit. When notified, the ETIAS Central Unit shall have access in accordance with Article 11(8) to the application file and any linked application files in order to verify whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data contained in the alert having triggered that hit and if a correspondence is confirmed, the ETIAS Central System shall send an automated notification to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert. The SIRENE Bureau concerned shall further verify whether the applicant’s personal data correspond to the personal data contained in the alert having triggered the hit and take any appropriate follow-up action. The ETIAS Central System shall also send an automated notification to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert having triggered a hit against SIS during the automated processing referred to in Article 20 where, following verification by the ETIAS Central Unit as referred to in Article 22, that alert has led to manual processing of the application in accordance with Article 26. The notification provided to the SIRENE Bureau of the Member State that entered the alert shall contain the following data: surname(s), first name(s) and, if any, alias(es); (b) place and date of birth; (c) sex; (d) nationality and, if any, other nationalities; (e) Member State of first intended stay, and if available, the address of first intended stay; (f) the applicant’s home address or, if not available, his or her city and country of residence; (g) travel authorisation status information, indicating whether a travel authorisation has been issued, refused or whether the application is subject to manual processing pursuant to Article 26; (h) a reference to any hits obtained in accordance with paragraphs 1 and 2, including the date and time of the hit. 4. The ETIAS Central System shall add a reference to any hit reported pursuant to paragraph 1 to the application file. That reference shall only be visible to and accessible by the ETIAS Central Unit and the SIRENE Bureau notified in accordance with paragraph 3, unless other limitations are provided for in this Regulation.