http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 266 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 10 / 2017 between Member States about the criminal convictions pronounced in the EU in order to improve cooperation between national authorities as they counter terrorism and cross-border crime. It can be stated to a certain degree that, despite the fact that the possibility of exchanging information on third country nationals via ECRIS exists, there is no common European procedure or mechanism that does this effectively. In this regard, ECRIS is considered to be a key part of the fight against terrorism, radicalisation and violent extremism139 and it is absolutely vital that within the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, the competent national authorities are in a position to exchange information relating to those who have been convicted of criminal offences, whether they are EU nationals or not, while also making it possible for them to confer the same effects beyond the territory of the sentencing Member State140. Whilst until the present date no alternative to ECRIS has been found with respect to the exchange of information on the criminal records of third country nationals (TCNs) and the stateless, considering that systems such as SIS II, Prüm or EURODAC have been designed to respond to different objectives, the improvement to the ECRIS system with regard to the TCNs forms part of the strategy described in the European Agenda on Security and hence there is currently a proposal for an ECRIS Directive on the table141. The proposal of the new Directive introduces a series of changes in order to reinforce and fill the gaps of the current legal framework, and in this context one important mechanism is one part of ECRIS aimed at identifying in an efficient manner the Member States that hold information on the criminal record of TCNs, transposed in a ‘hit/no hit’ system, based on an anonymised indexed filter that will make it possible to replace the costly and ineffective ‘generic requests’, which have hindered Member State use of ECRIS for TCNs. The ineffectiveness of ‘generic requests’ is partly due to the impossibility of storing TCN fingerprint data, a measure to be implemented in the Proposal for a Directive and justified by the need to guarantee more certain the establishment of the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) in application of Article 11 of Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA. 139 European Parliament: Report on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA, as regards the exchange of information on third country nationals and as regards the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), and replacing Council Decision 2009/316/JHA (COM(2016)0007 – C8-0012/2016 – 2016/0002(COD)) Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. 27.6.2016, Doc. A8- 0219/2016. Amendments 4 and 7. 140 White Paper on exchanges of information on convictions and the effect of such convictions in the European Union (SEC(2005)63), Recital 1. 141 European Commission: Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA, as regards the exchange of information on third country nationals and as regards the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), and replacing Council Decision 2009/316/JHA. Brussels, 19.1.2016 COM(2016) 7 final 2016/0002 (COD).
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