Examination of Witnesses (Questions 321-339)
Mr Gerrit Huybreghts
27 NOVEMBER 2006
Q321Chairman: Mr Huybreghts, thank you very
much indeed for coming to give evidence to us. For the record,
this meeting is, of course, on the record, although at any point
if you want to go off the record, you are very welcome.
Mr Huybreghts: Okay.
Q322 Chairman: A transcript of the meeting
is being taken and in due course you will be sent the transcript
for you to confirm that it correctly reflects what you have said.
This is scrutiny by a House of Lords sub-committee into Schengen
II, or SIS Mark II, however we care to refer to it. I think we
have given you notice of our questions in advance. Could I start,
please, with the first question which is whether the Council prepares
annual statistics on the functioning of the SIS and, if not, do
you not think that they should?
Mr Huybreghts: Okay. Can I make an opening statement
first?
Q323 Chairman: Please do.
Mr Huybreghts: I have to inform you of the limits
within which I work.
Q324 Chairman: Of course.
Mr Huybreghts: I work for the Council Secretariat,
so I do not represent the Council and I do not represent the Council
Secretariat. I asked permission to come here and I got permission
but I speak on my own behalf. As Council Secretariat we support
the presidency and assist the working groups within the Council,
but we should have some discretion as to the positions of delegations
from different countries. I am also aware of a number of issues
that I should not talk about so I will indicate that there is
nothing further I can say.
Q325 Chairman: Of course.
Mr Huybreghts: As Council Secretariat we have
to be strictly neutral politically, so in a number of cases I
will not be able to comment on opinions because we simply do not
do that.
Q326 Chairman: No.
Mr Huybreghts: If I could start by introducing
myself.
Q327 Chairman: Please do.
Mr Huybreghts: My name is Gerrit Huybreghts,
I am Belgian. I have been working on the Council Secretariat since
1990. I entered as an IT specialist and later joined the so-called
political side and started to work as a meetings secretary. I
worked on the IT side between roughly 1990 and 1999. In 1999 the
Schengen Secretariat was integrated into the Council Secretariat
and at that moment I started to work for SIS. As such, I have
been working as a meetings secretary for the SIS Technology Working
Groups. I have worked on SIRENE matters and did a follow-up of
the SIS II project and took part in Schengen evaluation missions.
That gives a general description of what I do. You refer to me
as a Council expert on statistics, which is a little bit of an
exaggeration. Statistics is one of the things that happened but
I am not an expert on statistics. The first question, whether
I would consider that the Council should do that, is a political
question so I cannot go into that. Until 1999 when the Schengen
co-operation was within the Schengen Secretariat there was an
annual report made by C.CIS, which is the central body located
in Strasbourg. When all of this was integrated into the European
Union, apparently at that moment they stopped making yearly reports,
so there were no more yearly statistics. It was only in 2005,
because of remarks that were made in the European Parliament about
secrecy in relation to the number of data in SIS and because of
questions from the academic world, that the presidency took the
initiative to publish yearly statistics but without giving details
about the different Member States. I have copies of the last two
for the Committee if you want these.
Q328 Chairman: Thank you very much. That
is the available documentation that you referred to?
Mr Huybreghts: Yes. I did not know how many
of you there were but I have made a number of copies.
Q329 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr Huybreghts: I have copies of three documents.
One is a document on the SIS database statistics as of 1 January
2005 and the next one is as of 1 January 2006. Then I have a table
of hits that were recorded. This table of hits is the 2006 version
but if you have a look at it you will see that it gives an overview
from 1997 to 2005.
Q330 Chairman: Thank you very much. I
do not want to draw you into answering political questions, I
quite understand your reservation on that, but can you explain
why are statistics regarded as controversial? What problems does
that raise?
Mr Huybreghts: As I explained, at one point
these were made and sent to the different governments but as soon
as it stopped the habit was lost and when it was tried to start
it up again everyone—
Q331 Chairman: Were they stopped because
of a controversy?
Mr Huybreghts: No, just because at the point
of the integration of the Schengen Secretariat within the European
Union there was no demand made to publish those yearly overviews
any more, so it just stopped.
Q332 Chairman: It just fell away.
Mr Huybreghts: Yes. When you try to start again
everybody wants to know why you want to publish statistics. This
was more or less what happened. There is a sensitivity on the
sides of the different delegations to give national data. As you
will see, from the statistics on hits that document was made public
without further ado.
Q333 Lord Avebury: Is any statistical
information available at Council level other than that which is
contained in the papers that are now distributed, which unfortunately
I have not yet been able to see? Are there any additional statistics
collected by some or all Member States which are not necessarily
presented to the Council, for example regarding the practical
use of SIS I made by national authorities?
Mr Huybreghts: Other statistical material except
this one? As I explained, the yearly statistics exist with a division
between the different Member States and they exist in somewhat
more detail than is given there. Apart from that, not a lot of
statistics are made about the SIS and available at Council level.
I am sure that at the national level there are more statistics
but those that I have seen differ very much from country to country.
The only instance when we come across them is during a Schengen
evaluation mission when additional data is asked for and then
we find out that they exist, but they are only used for the year
before the evaluation is made. There is no large scale exercise
in statistics for SIS I.
Q334 Chairman: Does this information
include available material from the United Kingdom and Ireland?
Mr Huybreghts: There is no information about—
Q335 Chairman: None?
Mr Huybreghts: No. Since they do not participate
they are not yet operational in the SIS.
Q336 Chairman: In the full SIS, that
is right.
Mr Huybreghts: Not in the full SIS and not in
the partial SIS.
Q337 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Can the statistics on the use of SIS II be linked to statistics
available at national or EU level relating to extradition requests,
visa refusals, refusals of entry at the border, and refusals to
renew or grant residence permits?
Mr Huybreghts: No. It is simple. You asked that
question before. In the Schengen Information System we have alerts
for unwanted aliens, so-called Article 96 data. The finalisation
of that is refusal of entry at the border. I have provided you
with the statistics on hits but these statistics are of very poor
quality as regards Article 96 data. Maybe I should explain a little
bit how the statistics are made. A hit means when there is a control
some person or object in the SIS is found and at that point the
country where it is found sends a so-called "G-form"
to the country that requested the person or object to be found.
The hit statistics are based on counting the G-forms but there
is no obligation to send a G-form for an Article 96 alert. The
reason for that is if you have, for example, a missing minor then
obviously you want to repatriate the minor and in order to do
that you need to get information about the parents or the police
unit that has been investigating the case of the missing minor,
so the two countries have to get in contact. For Article 96, unwanted
aliens, that is not done because what you have to do is refusal
of entry, you do not have to contact the country in question.
That is a rule that is put into the so-called SIRENE manual, a
manual that describes the procedures, and there it explicitly
says that there is no need to send a hit form in the case of Article
96. In the most recent version of the SIRENE manual that was published
on 16 November this year there is now a new rule that says statistics
will have to be provided, so the quality of statistics for refusals
of entry that are based on the SIS will increase.
Q338 Earl of Caithness: In this rather
frightening secrecy that surrounds this system, do you have information
that is not published on such things as the use of the SIRENE
system and actions taken following a hit? What I am trying to
get at is how much more information do you know and have got records
of that is not being released?
Mr Huybreghts: None that are systematic. As
I explained, when we do Schengen evaluation we go to visit a country
and ask a number of questions and at that moment you can be confronted
with statistics but it is the statistics used at that moment that
you get. There is no systematic collection at Council level of
statistics on the national side.
Q339 Earl of Caithness: Is that because
there is no requirement on the Member State to furnish you with
that or is that just because there is no system within the Council
to absorb them?
Mr Huybreghts: I would say both. There is a
point which might help the Committee to understand this. In the
present SIS you have a central system and national copies. The
only task of the central system is to make sure that the national
copies are identical because it is the national databases that
are really the active parts of the system. Every request to look
for a person and every control that is made is made on the national
systems. If statistics are made they are national because on the
central side it is not possible to see if, for example, there
are 100 people passing at a certain point who are controlled,
that is purely a national matter. The way different countries
do that is their own responsibility. There is no information available
at Council level but there are no requirements because it is a
national responsibility and there is no system at the Council
level to collect and absorb it.
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