On the 8th May 2008, the European Union published the council decision from the 4th March 2008 concerning the adoption of the SIRENE Manual and other implementing measures for the second generation Schengen Information System (SIS II). The manual will prove a useful handbook for operators of the SIS II system and for facilitating work by the SIRENE Bureau.

The prurpose of the system is to to ensure a high level of security within an area of freedom, security and justice of the European Union including the maintenance of public security and public policy and the safeguarding of security in the territories of the Member States. The SIS II system contains alert data allowing the identification of a person or an object and the necessary action to be taken. Member States shall in addition, exchange supplementary information related to the alert which is required for implementing certain provisions foreseen under the SIS II legal instruments, and for the SIS II to function properly, either on a bilateral or multilateral basis.
This structure built to deal with the exchange of supplementary information has been given the name ‘SIRENE’, which is an
acronym of the definition of the structure in English: Supplementary Information REquest at the National Entries.

The SIRENE Bureau

Throughout the EU, A national ‘SIRENE Bureau’ will be a fully operational office, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It shall serve as a single contact point for the Member States for the purpose of exchanging supplementary information. Its main tasks are:

• To ensure the exchange of all supplementary information in accordance with the provisions of this SIRENE Manual, as provided in Article 8 of the SIS II legal instruments.
• To coordinate the verification of the quality of the information entered into the SIS II.

SIRENE Manual

The SIRENE Manual is a set of instructions for the SIRENE Bureaux, which describes in detail the rules and procedures governing the bilateral or multilateral exchange of supplementary information. It constitutes an implementing measure necessary for the operational use of the SIS II as laid down in the SIS II legal instruments. Detailed rules for the exchange of supplementary information shall be adopted in accordance with SIS II Regulation and in the form of a manual called the ‘SIRENE Manual’.

What os the the SIS II made up of?

• A central system (the Central SIS II) composed of:
• A technical support function (CS-SIS) containing a database, the ‘SIS II database’.
• A uniform national interface (NI-SIS).
• A national system (N.SIS II) in each of the Member States, consisting of the national data systems which communicate with the Central SIS II. An N.SIS II may contain a data file (a national copy), containing a complete or partial copy of the SIS II database.
• A communication infrastructure between the CS-SIS and the NI-SIS (the Communication Infrastructure) that provides an encrypted virtual network dedicated to SIS II data and the exchange of data between SIRENE Bureaux as defined below.