On 11 April 2018, FRA published its Opinion on the implications of increased levels of interoperability for fundamental rights. It looked at the proposed Regulations on establishing a framework for interoperability between EU information systems (borders and visas) and on establishing a framework for interoperability between EU information systems (police and judicial cooperation, asylum, and migration).

The Opinion contains individual opinions addressing a number of issues: non-discrimination and a general fundamental rights safeguard clause; objectives of interoperability; reporting and statistics; the right to information; the right of access, correction and deletion; and how to mainstream fundamental rights in the implementation of the Regulations.

The four main components at the heart of the Regulations are a European Search Portal (EPS); a shared Biometric Matching Service (BMS); a Common Identity Repository (CIR), and a Multiple-Identity Detector (MDI).

The European Search Portal (ESP) intends to allow competent authorities to search multiple IT systems simultaneously, using both biographical and biometric data. Searching and comparing biometric data (fingerprints and facial images) from several IT systems will be enabled via the shared Biometric Matching Service (BMS). The Common Identity Repository (CIR) shall contain biographical and biometric identity data of third-country nationals available in existing EU IT systems. And, finally, the Multiple-Identity Detector (MID) will make it possible to check whether the biographical and/or biometric identity data contained in a search also exists in other IT systems.