Background Around 1.4 billion people from 60 countries worldwide can currently benefit from visa-free travel to the European Union. With the ever-increasing number of travellers, the biggest challenge for border authorities in the EU is to ensure smooth movement of legitimate travellers, while detecting any illegal activity at the borders. This is why the EU set up the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), dedicated to the non-EU travellers who are exempt from the visa requirement. ETIAS will help verify the applications of the travellers coming from those countries to assess whether they are entitled to enter the Schengen Area. ETIAS will contribute to optimise border control procedures on arrival, shortening the time needed to cross the Union’s borders. It will strengthen border management, reinforce the EU visa liberalisation policy and help prevent illegal immigration. It will also contribute to the fight against terrorism and organised crime. Currently, ETIAS is in the development phase and is expected to become operational at the end of 2022. The next two years will be crucial for the creation of this system. ETIAS-related entities at Frontex are the ETIAS and Interoperability Task Force and the ETIAS Central Unit.
Application Handler Unit This job post will be part of the ETIAS Centre Unit Division, under the Application Handler Unit. The mission and main task of the Applications Handlers Unit is to verify within 12 hours all cases where the automated application process flagged an issue in an application. If a “hit” is confirmed or if there are further doubts related to the application, the ETIAS Central Unit will trigger the manual processing of the application file by the National Unit of the responsible Member State.
It will be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The Unit will also - ensure that the data it enters in the application files are up to date and in accordance with the relevant legal provisions, and correct the data in case of an error;
- indicate, where necessary, the Member State responsible for the manual processing of the application;
- process requests made by Europol for consultation of data in the ETIAS Central System;
- facilitate, where necessary, consultations between Member States or between the responsible Member State and Europol.
The Unit will also perform any other tasks that will be assigned to it during the practical implementation phase.
Applications Handler Duties
During the development phase [only applicable to the Applications Handlers joining the ETIAS Central Unit before the entry into operation of the ETIAS system]
Support the ETIAS project within Frontex by:
- assisting the development and the documenting of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handling of the application files by the ETIAS Central Unit, in close cooperation with ETIAS National Units, Europol and other relevant actors;
- taking part in user-acceptance tests to validate the functionalities of the ETIAS Central System, inputting the data and applying all relevant procedures following the test scenarios and reporting on the test results and encountered issues;
- contributing to the execution of the end-to-end testing of ETIAS by - inputting data; - applying all relevant procedures following the test scenarios; - reporting on the results and on any issues encountered during the execution of the tests and proposing improvement to the SOPs;
- preparing the system for the entry into operation.
After the entry into operation of the ETIAS [applicable to the Applications Handlers joining the ETIAS Central Unit before and after the entry into operation of the ETIAS system]
Perform the following main tasks within the Central Unit:
- following a positive reply resulting from the automatic query of the databases consulted by ETIAS, to process the requests submitted for verification by the ETIAS Central System to the ETIAS Central Unit. Once the verification is completed, to record the relevant result;
- to process Europol requests for access to ETIAS data for law enforcement purposes;
- to initiate and facilitate the consultation process between Europol and the National Units, where applicable;
- to perform data quality verifications and corrections, where applicable;
- to contribute to the improvement of the process, by reporting any difficulties and issues, as well as suggesting improvements of the system and the SOPs;
- to assist with the integration of new staff members, by coaching and advising.