Bulgaria Wired into SIRENE-Schengen Information System

Bulgaria's Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov has officially opened the National "SIRENE Bureau," which will consist of 30,000 employees of the ministry.

SIRENE (which means "cheese" in Bulgarian) stands for Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry out outlines the main task of the "SIRENE Bureaux," established in all Schengen States, which is the exchange of additional or supplementary information on alerts between the states.

The Bulgarian National "SIRENE Bureaux" is a specialized operational unit in the directorate "International operational police cooperation" in the Interior Ministry.

"Today's opening of the bureau has been realized thanks to the European solidarity and the money that was provided for the technical coverage," Tsvetanov said Friday, adding that the investment cost a total of EUR 1,5 M and was provided through EU funding.

He has explained that the final evaluation of Bulgaria's readiness to enter the Schengen zone, which will be at the beginning of December, is connected to the Schengen Information System (SIS) and the SIRENE Bureaux.

Tsvetanov said that the actual functioning and exploitation of the systems, connected to SIRENE, will begin on November 5. He also wished Bulgaria to enter the Schengen zone during the Hungarian EU Presidency, which begins January 1, 2011.

The head of the directorate "International operational police cooperation," Dimitar Georgiev, has demonstrated how checks on people and vehicles would be performed through SIS.

About 30,000 employees from different units of the Interior Ministry have been trained to work with the Schengen Information System, which has done 33 million records of wanted or missing people, people, who are banned from entering the Schengen zone, investigated or missing vehicles, lost and fake documents, weapons.

Once entered in the system, the information could reach all end users within 3 minutes.

SIRENE Bureaux provide supplementary information on alerts and coordinate measures in relation to alerts in SIS. They also exchange data important for police and judicial co-operation, conducts database queries, coordinates cross-border operations, etc.