Police blog: Finland doesn’t utilize the opportunity offered by EU to improve internal security

Publication date 6.10.2022 13.24
News item

The information systems shared by the European authorities are being developed to allow for a better utilisation of the biometric identifiers and other data held by the authorities to maintain internal security within the EU.

However, Finland fails to make use of this opportunity. Instead, Finland’s internal legislative regulation takes another turn. This is what Assistant Police Commissioner Hannu Kautto of the Internal Affairs department of the National Police Board writes in his blog published on the Police website.

The Schengen Information System (SIS) is one of the most important systems to support the work of the authorities. The SIS is also important for Finland since crimes increasingly take place across national borders.

- One objective of the ongoing reform of the SIS is to increase the use of biometric data which is a reliable method of identifying individuals. In the future, however, Finland’s national legislation will allow us to include in the SIS alerts only the identification data stored on the basis of crimes, with some minor exceptions, Assistant Police Commissioner Kautto comments on the situation in his blog.

According to him, Finland’s revised national legislation concerning the use of biometrics in the SIS limits the country’s possibilities to implement the tasks assigned to the authorities on the basis of EU regulations, and to safeguard the Union’s internal security and control illegal immigration. 

- The Police presented all of the above considerations during legal preparation work but irrespective of these views, our national legislation will limit such core exchange of information with other EU countries as would help us maintain our internal security. Besides weakening Finland’s own performance, this will also impact the security of the entire Schengen area. 
 

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