Meanwhile, the police over here are doing this. Makes me wonder what police in the EU, and especially the Schengen Zone, are up to.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

It also states it will only ask if you have been convicted of any offence listed in the Annex - taking a quick look, it is a list of the usual suspects for very serious offences and hopefully will mean the vast majority of people, even with a conviction in the last 10 years, will be OK.

On the background check via SIS, it is still only going to show previous alerts - there is no way for someone to know whether the alert related to a conviction or not (you could simply be under suspicion..)

The link to official ETIAS proposal and how it will be conducted is here..

https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-21-2018-INIT/en/pdf

On page 68 (of 210!) it lists the requirements for criminal conviction disclosure.
They are only asking for convictions in the past 10 years, so some people can honesty answer no to this.

The background checks will no doubt still be done via SIS to check the honesty of the responses, but if people are seen to have convictions (cautions not having to be disclosed) outside of the 10 year duration then the background checks will approve them anyway, as they have answered honestly and are of no concern to the EU?

On the other hand, part of the background checks for ETIAS will include looking at databases such as SIS. So, if your details have been input there, they are likely to stay there, and they will be seen. According to information here, there is no mention of a time limit for disclosing convictions, and they seem to have a list of offences that automatically disqualify applicants. The ten years seems to apply to having to leave a country for "administrative reasons". Of course, it's a press release, not a complete description of the system, so there may well be other relevant details.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

There has already been a post on this thread with the EU’s planned questions relating to criminal records for the ETIAS.

Unless this has changed, then the questions required from the ETIAS only relate to convictions in the past 10 years, or terrorism convictions in the past 20 years.
(This detail is on page 62 of many if I remember correctly?)

So if you have a conviction over 10 years old, or a caution then you won’t have to disclose anyway.

This may put some people’s minds at rest?

Of course, once we leave the EU, we won't have any input into their rules and procedures, so they won't have to take our prejudices and outdated attitudes into account. Being a rule-taker isn't always a bad thing....

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Macron confirmed that this is fake news and he had used the wrong words in his 2nd language!

Of course, ETIAS may still be a concern in the future - lots of comments about that in other threads on the forum

Plans are in place to add a criminal records question to the Schengen visa application so it is in line with the ETIAS application.

If they don't ask, you don't have to tell them, but UK citizens don't need a Schengen visa yet. The rules may change when we leave the EU.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Ok yes. That makes sense.
Currently the Schengen visa application doesn’t require criminal record disclosure so even if we had to apply for one, we wouldn’t have to disclose?