Usage of the VIS: trends and figures

• Pages: 17-20

Report on the VIS 17

The eu-LISA DPO represents the Agency at the twice-yearly meetings of the VIS Supervision Coordination

Group, and reports on the current state of the VIS central system, future developments, data quality issues and

security incidents at central system level or reported by Member States. This group, composed of the National

Data Protection Authorities and the EDPS, monitors data protection legal compliance at both Mem ber State

and VIS central system levels.

6. Usage of the VIS: trends and figures

The VIS started operations in 2011 and was rolled out in phases worldwide with the two biggest regions in terms

of issuing visas 挑 China and Russia 挑 rolled out in Q3/Q4 2015. Since completion of the rollout in February 2016,

the system has been operational worldwide in all consulates of the Schengen countries .

Data from the VIS central system for the last 3 years (see Graph 1) s how that:

 the total number VIS operations per year has been slowly increasing;

 the number of visa applications processed per year is quite stable;

 border operations fell in 2018 but rose slightly in 2019.

Graph 1: VIS operations, visa applications and border operations, 2016-2019

The maximum number of operations per hour observed (peak/hour) was 123 393 operations in 2018 and 138 827

operations in 2019, which still represents only one-third of the total capacity. In fact, the VIS was tested with a

maximum throughput of up to 450 000 operations per hour without performance deteri oration.

The busiest month was July in both 2018 and 2019. This is in line with past usage and reflects the fact that over

53% of the visa applications registered in 2019 were for to urism reasons. In terms of searches, the VIS central

system processed:

 25 million alphanumeric searches in 2019 (2018: 23 million)

 7 million biometric searches in 2019 (2018: 8 million)

 17 million biometric authentications44 in 2019 (2018: unchanged)

The highest demand for Schengen visas was registered by the Russian Federation. With over 4 million visa

applications registered in 2019, growing from over 3.5 million in 2018, the Russian Federation continued to be

the most active region worldwide. The second m ost active region was China with almost 3 million visa

applications in 2019 , up from 2.8 million in 2018.

As per Article 50(6) of the VIS Regulation and Article 17(5) of the VIS Decision, Member States have a legal

obligation to provide data to eu-LISA to compile this report. The data collection has been a very long an d

complex exercise45. An overview of the data is available in the annexes and there is a short analysis below.

44 Fingerprint verification mainly performed at the border posts.

45 The last contribution was received from Hungary on 23 July 2020.