Interoperacyjność unijnych systemów informacyjnych – narzędzie wykorzystywane w zwalczaniu terroryzmu i poważnej przestępczości transgranicznej (część I)

Abstract

Terrorism and cross-border crimes are complex and diversified problems. They are one of the most serious threats to the modern world, both nationally and internationally. The Act on the Police contains the major tasks of this formation, namely: “To cooperate with foreign police forces and their international organisations, as well as European Union bodies and institutions, on the basis of international agreements and treaties and separate regulations” and “The Police also carry out tasks resulting from the legislation of European Union as well as international agreements and arrangements on the rules and within the scope specified therein”. In order to carry out statutory tasks, police officers at home and in the world work on the basis of information which is collected and processed in various types of files, registers, collections or databases. This information is exchanged among authorised authorities at home and in the world. This cooperation is aimed at preventing, detecting and combating the most dangerous crime, in particular, terrorism and organised cross-border crime. The latter became very real when controls at the internal borders of the European Union were abolished, through the creation of the Schengen area. From the beginning of the launch of the Schengen area, it has been realised that security within the area and external border management would require a need to create and implement IT systems whose task would be to support the above-mentioned activities. The abolition of border controls and increased migration flows in Europe are conducive to developing cross-border and terrorist crime. Awareness and experience related to the materialisation of the above-mentioned threats initiated strengthening of cooperation among the individual countries of the globe. Strengthening of cooperation became possible following the creation and launch of large-scale information systems, namely: Schengen Information System (SIS), Eurodac, Visa Information System (VIS), Entry/Exit System (EES) and European criminal records information system - third country nationals (ECRIS-TCN). In this part of the publication, in view of the extensive nature of the issue, only SIS and VIS systems have been described, however, I encourage you to enhance your knowledge about other large-scale systems, i.e. Eurodac, Entry/Exit, ECRIS-TCN and the issue related to their interoperability.