.svg){kind=logo}
Key Highlights
• A total of 15.0 billion access events to the Schengen Information System (SIS) in 2024, including 15.0 billion searches
• 93.2 million alerts stored as of December 31, 2024
• 397,804 hits on foreign alerts processed by SIRENE Bureaux — up 11% year on year
• Biometric searches increased 66% to 6.97 million, while automated queries remained relatively stable
Europe’s SIS expanded further in 2024, seeing more searches, more alerts, and more hits handled via national SIRENE Bureaux. The Netherlands led in the volume of searches, followed by Belgium and France.
Authorities recorded 15,044,676,229 access instances in 2024, comprising 15,021,198,103 searches and 23,478,126 alert-management operations (such as creating, updating, or deleting alerts). On average, there were over 41 million searches daily and nearly 1,100 hits processed each day across Europe.
Compared to 2023, alphanumeric searches rose by around 2%, while automatically processed searches held steady at about 9.9 billion (down slightly from 10.1 billion). The most notable increase was in biometric queries: AFIS searches hit 6,968,949 in 2024 — a 66% jump.
By the end of 2024, the database contained 93,195,404 alerts covering persons and objects (vehicles, firearms, identity documents, containers, etc.). Earlier usage stats — over 7 billion system uses in 2021 — underscore how rapidly SIS has grown.
SIRENE Bureaux saw 397,804 hits on foreign alerts in 2024, up 11% over the previous year. These hits trigger coordination between the country that issued an alert and the country that detected it. The rise in hits reflects SIS’s expanding operational scope across member states.
In relation to return procedures, 570,947 alerts were related to third-country nationals subject to return decisions. These alerts led to 103,901 hits on foreign alerts, and 18,904 confirmed returns were linked to hits on alerts originating from the same country (including 948 removals). Additionally, 9,987 exchanges of information were recorded in connection with hits at external borders upon entry.
In terms of which countries searched most:
• The Netherlands accounted for about 28% of all alphanumeric searches
• Belgium made up about 20%
• France contributed around 9%?Other institutions like Frontex began accessing SIS from Italy (June 2024) and Cyprus (December 2024), and Europol also performed searches directly in the central system.
It’s important to note that comparisons over time should take into account the reinforced SIS framework introduced in March 2023, as well as broader EU interoperability initiatives that shape how national systems query and manage alerts.
Source: eu-LISA, SIS Annual Statistics Report 2024
October 16, 2025
