
Article 1 
Part 1 of the Schengen consultation network (technical specifications) is amended as shown in Annex I.
Article 2 
Part 2 of the Schengen consultation network (technical specifications) is amended as shown in Annex II.
Article 3 
This Decision shall apply from 1 February 2009.
Article 4 
This Decision is addressed to the Member States in accordance with the Treaty establishing the European Community.
Done at Brussels, 27 November 2008.
For the Council
The President
M. ALLIOT-MARIE
ANNEX I

Part 1 of the Schengen consultation network (technical specifications) is hereby amended as follows:

1.. point 1.2 shall be replaced by the following:
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1.2. 
As a matter of principle Vision is designed as a system running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the event of one of the connections breaking down, the MTA, the user agent, and if necessary, the national application, should have the capacity to store the data to be sent or received via the network for several days. Consequently, bearing in mind the estimated daily traffic and the potential increases in traffic due to political decisions on visa matters, the MTA, the user agent, and where necessary, the national application, must meet the following minimum requirements.

In addition, the MTA, the user agent and the national application must be able to cope with possible breakdowns of other partner systems. They must resend messages which have not been delivered, but not overload other partner systems by, for example, unnecessary repetition of messages which are thought to have been lost.
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2.. point 1.2.1 shall be replaced by the following:
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1.2.1. 
If the system breaks down, operation must be resumed within 24 hours. To ensure that operations are resumed, the following minimum undertakings apply:


— the Schengen States are required to have a service contract guaranteeing repairs to, and/or replacement of, hardware and software,
— the Schengen States are required to have a backup system,
— the Schengen States are required to equip their MTA with a preventative peripheral device to compensate any power malfunctions,
— the Schengen States are required to guarantee that MTA and applications hardware and software are not cut off for any reason other than breakdown or maintenance. In case of regular maintenance, such as database backups, the maintenance slot shall not exceed a maximum of two hours,
— the Schengen States are to guarantee the availability of sufficient personnel during working hours to ensure operation of the MTA at the best possible rate,
— the Schengen States are required to distinguish clearly between the test environment and the operational environment; adapting the test environment should not affect the operational equipment and vice versa,
— adaptations to the Schengen Consultation Network should always be tested in the test environment before being used in the operational environment.

In addition the system must be able to cope with the following amounts of data:


— store the equivalent of two days operations, i.e. a maximum of 100 Megabytes,
— send up to 30 000 messages and 30 000 delivery reports per day,
— receive up to 30 000 messages and 30 000 delivery reports per day.

In addition, each Schengen State must distinguish between “retransmitting” and “resending as a new message”. The term “re-send” in the next chapters (especially 1.2.2) covers both cases, but the following distinction must be made:


— “retransmitting” means sending again the same message, usually subject to retransmission parameters of the MTA (e.g. sendmail, MS-Exchange, Lotus Notes). After each retransmission there are no more messages in the system, the first message is just transmitted again;
— “resending as a new message” means that a new message with the same content is prepared. The destination point might receive two different messages, but with the same content, if the first one was held in a queue somewhere.

Schengen States are invited to use the first possibility (retransmitting) wherever possible, to avoid the unnecessary multiplying of messages in the system.
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ANNEX II

Part 2 of the Schengen consultation network (technical specifications) is hereby amended as follows:

1.. in point 2.1.4, Heading No 026 shall be replaced by the following:
'Heading No 026: Type of visa format: code (2)Codification of the various types of visas defined in the Common Visa Instructions. The entire heading, or part of it, can be used for the visa sticker.“B”transit visas“C”short -stay visas“DC”long-stay visas valid concurrently as short-stay visas';
2.. in points 2.1.4 (Form A), 2.1.6 (Form C), 2.1.7 (Form F), the content of row 026 in the fifth column of the table (‘Examples/Comments’) shall be replaced by the following:
'C {B|′C′|′DC′}'.
