Following the successful roll-out of
the Visa Information System (VIS) at consular posts worldwide, it gives eu-LISA great
pleasure to inform you that VIS has processed its 20,000,000th visa
application. This represents around 1,0Bn€ in non-fiscal revenues for
Member States since its entry into operations on the 11th of October
2011.
Following the provisions of
the Commission’s Implementing Decision 2015/731, Member States hav started using
VIS globally and only this year VIS will have
efficiently processed close to 9.5Mi applications. This solely has brought in
around 500Mi€ for Member States, not accounting for the additional touristic
revenues drawn from those who travelled to Europe.
The
Central System is consistently performing very well, subsequent to the
completion of the full VIS roll-out schedule to the consular authorities. eu-LISA is continuously enhancing the
performance of the system by upgrading the current VIS storage-processing
capacity and increasing
its processing times to better support the business and particularly border
related activities of Member States.
By Q2 2016 the system processing
capability will be upgraded
towards an intermediate step of 60Mi applications. In the next couple of years
the VIS storage-processing capacity will be further increased to a target
estimated between 80Mi and 120Mi visa applications, in line with data
protection and retention rules.
The plan for roll-out in the region
‘external borders’ is under further discussions, with the roll-out to this last
region enabling border guards to issue biometric visas. In addition, VIS Mail
phase 2 will soon enter into operations and replace the VISION mechanism. From
that moment onwards, Member States will globally use VIS Mail for the Schengen
consultation processes.
The Agency is thus
very pleased to inform all stakeholders of the smooth operations of the
Visa Information System globally.
