Hi Geoffrey,

Unfortunately the green notices are something that have been, since May this year, much more widely used by the UK Police for those who have to notify of foreign travel. I have to notify too (caution, soon off the SoR) and had a similar experience travelling on the Eurostar a few months ago - my passport was scanned and I was taken aside by a French border officer who had absolutely no idea what was going on. Queue some UK police coming, a quick chat with them, and I was on my way with a smile from the French officer who still seemed none the wiser. Before this, I had travelled extensively when on the SoR and had no issues with foreign borders, even if my passport was scanned.

Green notices should only be issued after a risk assessment has been carried out, and their intention is to notify foreign countries that someone who has committed a crime AND is likely to committ that crime again, is travelling to their country. Do you know what 'risk' has been assigned to you by your police contact / PPU? If it is low then I would DEFINITELY challenge this back with them as the guidelines suggest they shouldn't just be blanket issued.

Also, a potential positive is that green notices are meant to disappear from your passport once your trip notification has finished. So, hopefully you and I won't be flagged once we're off the SoR and aren't sending paperwork to PPU, though I haven't found anyone who has confirmed this yet other than what Interpol and the ACPO guidelines say.

I'm also travelling to Spain shortly so will let you know about my experience, though yours doesn't seem overly bad compared to being pulled aside in London by French Police who spoke next to no English!

Thanks Geoffrey.

Can you let us know what PPU say? I've been on the SoR for over 1.5 of my two years now and I've only seen my PPU three times- once for the initial visit, once after about 9 months and once a few months ago. I have no confirmation of what risk they have assigned me, but judging by their behaviour with me I can only think it's a low risk status.

I'd also be interested to know what happened to you when you got to Spain:

- what questions did they ask?
- did they ask you at the passport check point or take you somewhere else (a side room etc) to ask?

I understand in reality they will just put all through and not pay attention to the guidelines, however what I was sharing was the green notice requirements and guidelines that are set out by Interpol. Though, of course, Interpol may not even be following their own guidelines.

It looks like there isn't much point in doing FOI requests to Interpol as they've obviously lied to you - I believe that 'security information' can be left off a FOI response, which is probably what they did for you. It could be better to do a FOI request to your local police force, asking what their guidelines are for submitting green travel notices to Interpol, or whether all of their requests are put forward. That way, at least we'll know if the UK police are following the Interpol guidelines.

Won't it be great if the police stuck to their own rules?

The fact of the matter is that we're on this notice system now. The main thing to work out is how we get off it, properly. None of the "oh, it'll be automatically removed when your notification time finishes" nonsense. Green notices are meant to expire as soon as the notified trip has finished, and so when not notifying travel should no longer be an issue, anywhere. However, in reality I've read some documents posted online which shows a review of Interpol in the US, which stated that some notices had remained on people's travel records for up to 5 years as they hadn't been deleted...

I feel we are at the start of a very dangerous hill here. It's a shame that Dicky hasn't responded since the original post, as to me it sounds like in the past he had to notify but no longer does, and even still he was flagged. Now that is very worrying.

I'd be interested to hear from others who have travelled recently on their experiences (the more thorough checks / potential info sharing came in around May 2015). I'm travelling in a few weeks so will see what comes of it:

I tend to get some reaction from the UKba when returning to the UK, beit a second glance or maybe one or two questions. But they're never overly intrusive, at least not enough to attract attention from other travellers (at least in my experience).

My concern is the foreign border controls - not being able to speak the language and having a clueless border agent seeing a passport flag is not a fun occasion, as I found out a while ago. I'm travelling with a friend in a few weeks, and I really hope nothing pops up!

I have come across this, a system called SISII, which went live about the same time that I started to have the travel problems. Scroll about three quarters of the way down.. the area of relevance to those who notify foreign travel is under the article 36(2) section - https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/investigations/european-investigations/schengen-information-system/#participating-sisii-countries

So it could be this, rather than Interpol green notice's, that are flagging up.

I totally agree topper. The more I read about SISII, when it was implemented and how it works, the more I think the talk (somewhat made worse by me) of Interpol green notices is a bit of a red herring, at least for travel within the EU.

Here's an interesting report on 6 month's of activity of SISII, showing the number of alerts per category type etc - https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXV/EU/06/25/EU_62571/imfname_10544035.pdf

I'm amazed... there was me thinking there wouldn't be many alerts out there and that foreign border agents would be waiting to find me in particular when I travelled, but during the time of the above report there had been nearly 56 million, yes MILLION, alerts issued in the SISII system. Only 797,000 concerned people, the vast majority are alerts looking out for dodgy passports, driving licenses etc. The other thing to remember is that article 36(2) alerts on people are meant to be for discreet checks on returning to the UK, so questions may be asked but the idea is that the border agents aren't meant to give it away that an alert has flagged up on their screens. The U.K. Border force checks on the return to the UK tend to be fairly in line with this, but that's just the UK policy, I'm not sure what other jurisdictions in Europe follow, because they don't seem to be very discreet!

My understanding is that SISII alerts should be removed once the notification requirements have finished, but it seems that the articles I'm reading doesn't make this explicitly clear, and just says that alerts CAN be removed. SISII is meant to be an ad hoc system, as in setup on someone when notification of travel is received, rather than an ongoing system. Has anyone had issues in Europe AFTER their notification requirements have finished recently?

The question though is whether the UK police are actually issuing Interpol green notice's or whether it's just article 36 SISII notices for EU countries?

It may depend on where you travel, as otherwise they'd be issuing two notices each time if I'm correct? E.g. If you go to France, I'd be surprised if they're issuing both an article 36 notice AND an Interpol green notice for one trip. But, if you're trying to go to Australia, then a green notice would make more sense?

In light of th terrible atrocity in Paris, I've been waiting for an announcement on tighten travel controls and it looks like things are indeed heading that way. Relating to a meeting of foreign ministers this week, the below is from a Reuters article:

"At present, most EU citizens are merely subject to a visual check of their documents. Pressed by France, ministers also agreed to revise the Schengen border code in due course to make such systematic checks of EU citizens compulsory and also introduce biometric data checks for those crossing the borders."

Although the UK isn't in the Schengen Agreement, what this likely means is the end of simply being waved through (more or less) when you arrive in an EU country from the UK, and potentially also when travelling between Schengen area countries. For those who have to notify travel, it's likely to get a lot more likely that border agents in France/Spain etc will now scan passports which will potentially result in any article 36 / Interpol green botices flagging up... not an ideal situation at all!

That's the concern, isn't it?

I got taken aside in May when SISII 2 was first activated, and the French border agent didn't have a clue what was going on. I'd imagine when it happens next time they will be a lot more clued up...