Meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs&nbsp;on Reinforcement of checks against relevant databases at external borders, in the EP in Brussels. Vote on the report by Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO). The report is adopted. Statements by Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO), rapporteur.

Brussels

meeting

vote

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

MACOVEI, Monica (ECR, RO)

surveillance of the external borders of the EU (T)

Reinforcement of checks against relevant databases at external borders: extracts from the vote on the report by Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO)

General views of the meeting room, atmosphere ahead the vote (2 shots)

Chair President opening the vote on the report by Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO), on the 'Reinforcement of checks against relevant databases at external borders'.

Views during the vote on the report as amended: Total voters 54 ; in favour 48; against 6; abstentions 0. Adopted

Vote on the mandate to open the trialogue: Total voters 54 ; in favour 38; against 16; abstentions 0. Adopted

SOUNDBITE (English), Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO), rapporteur, I vote mostly to have systematic checks at the entry and at the exit of the EU external borders. Not only Schengen, all external borders. Systematic checks means to check every person who comes in or out, EU citizen or not, in the data base. It is not a physical checking, is a checking in the data bases. We have Schengen information system data base, Europol data base, Eurjoust data base and other data bases.

So if we look in to all these data bases we can see, that there is an information that a person did something somewhere, that he entered illegally in the EU, or that he has an arrest warrant on top. Any of these information must be shared. This is the most important. People from other groups wanted to have only check on the people from whom there are already information, but we've seen what happened in Paris and in Belgium, that there were information, but still someone didn't send them further, and the chain of information didn't work well, so people died.

SOUNDBITE (English), Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO), I think that there is an issue for some member states because intelligence services or police they don't trust others form other member states. Trust is at the base of changing information. I hope and I believe that when it's about terrorist attacks this information will be exchanged. There is one more problem, in all these databases Europol, Eurojust, Schengen information System, member states have to fill in them with data. So it's a basket where member states have to put data. Now they are quite lazy, many of them, not all, but many of them are lazy. That is also in the report to urge them to fill in these baskets with information. Otherwise the checks are irrelevant.