ABSTRACT
In the post-9/11 world, governments in Europe and North America seem to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, in the sense that they are obsessed with risks stemming from international mobility, allocating large amounts of public funds. For the development of technologies that are envisaged to revolutionize practices and processes of border security. The Visa Information System (VIS) was, at least initially, justified in official policy discourse as a measure necessary to deal with international terrorism and implement the European Union common visa policy. Shortly after the tragic events of 9/11, on 20 September 2001, the Member States’ Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs held an “extraordinary” Council meeting to discuss possible measures aimed to combat terrorism. Once the VIS feasibility study was finalized, the Commission prepared the legislative proposals defining the exact purpose and functionalities of the VIS, its end users, as well as the conditions and procedures for visa-related information sharing.
