This report proposes that Europol should have direct access to the customs information system.

(c)the Customs information system.

This report deals with the Customs Information System, or CIS.

Think of Schengen, Europol, the campaign against fraud, and now the Customs Information System.

The Council Act setting up the Customs Information System contravenes Community law.

Since 2001, he is the Belgian representative in the Joint Supervisory Authority of the EU Customs Information System.

The Polish Minister of the Interior undoubtedly knows more about the Customs Information System than Parliament's rapporteur - I can assure you of that.

Article K.6 of the Treaty on European Union provides for the European Parliament to be consulted on measures such as the setting-up of a customs information system.

The strengthened machinery for customs cooperation for which it provides, together with, at least, the legal possibility of creating a database for the customs information system respond to an urgent necessity.

In order to provide protection against organized crime, there is not only a security system in the area of credit cards, but also, for example, the Schengen information system or the customs information system.

In addition, the scope of the Act is made unclear by the fact that the Convention on the Customs Information System is accompanied by an agreement on provisional implementation between certain Member States.

Improving data protection under the third pillar presupposes that this framework decision should apply to the entire pillar, including Europol, Eurojust and the Customs Information System, which already come under the third pillar.

Security arrangements for travel within the Schengen zone may best be ensured through multi-level cooperation, whose key elements will comprise rapid exchanges of information between national authorities, the work of Europol, and highly developed customs information systems.

On question 1, the Council argues that the customs information system contained in the proposal for a regulation constitutes an integral community entity which does not relate to the harmonisation of individual national legislation for the internal market provided for by Article 100a.

It was a report where I agreed with the rapporteur on the main points, namely that access to the data entered into the customs information system is to be ensured only to specifically designated bodies and staff like the Member States, Europol and Eurojust.

In my opinion, the review of the customs information system as reflected by the report is necessary in order to adapt it better to the control services' requirements and to allow a limited number of users to carry out analyses of the information contained in the system.

For this purpose the Customs Information System will soon also be available to designated law enforcement authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland and, after the second generation of the CIS has become operational, to the ten Member States that joined Europe in 2004.

In doing so, I shall refer to another information system that is due to be set up in the European Union: the Customs Information System. The purpose of this system is to assist in pursuing serious contraventions of national laws in the customs sector.

In December 1993 the European Parliament, under the co-decision procedure in Article 189b of the EEC Treaty, adopted a legislative opinion on the proposal for a regulation on mutual assistance between the administrative authorities and the creation of a customs information system, CIS for short.

The seventh point is that Europol must be given access to the various computer systems - among which I will mention only the Schengen Information System, the Customs Information System, and Eurodac - which are to be united in one single uniform computer system with different entitlements to access it.

As the House will know, the aim of the convention on the customs information system is to create a database containing operational information on sensitive matters such as illegal drugs, weapons, pornography and so on which are currently outside the Community's legal competence for use by the customs administrations of the Member States.

With a view to developing a customs information system, agreement was reached with the Commission on a system which will permit provisional application of the Convention on the Customs Information System as soon as a certain number of countries have ratified this convention.