Federal Act
on Foreign Nationals and Integration
(Foreign Nationals and Integration Act, FNIA)¹

¹ In or­der to im­prove bor­der con­trols and to com­bat un­law­ful entry in­to the Schen­gen area and trans­it through the in­ter­na­tion­al trans­it zones of the air­ports, at the re­quest of the bor­der con­trol au­thor­it­ies SEM may re­quire air car­ri­ers to provide per­son­al data on the pas­sen­gers it is car­ry­ing and data on the flight to the SEM or to the au­thor­ity re­spons­ible for the bor­der con­trols. The data must be trans­mit­ted im­me­di­ately after de­par­ture.³¹⁵

^1bis SEM may ex­tend the duty to provide data to oth­er flights:

a.

at the re­quest of fed­pol: to com­bat in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­ised crime and ter­ror­ism;

b.

at the re­quest of the FIS: to re­spond to threats to in­tern­al and ex­tern­al se­cur­ity that arise from ter­ror­ism, es­pi­on­age and pre­par­a­tions for il­leg­al trad­ing in weapons and ra­dio­act­ive ma­ter­i­als and il­leg­al tech­no­logy trans­fers.³¹⁶

^1ter The data must be trans­mit­ted im­me­di­ately after de­par­ture.³¹⁷

² The or­der to provide data must con­tain:

a.

the air­ports or states of de­par­ture;

b.

the data cat­egor­ies in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3;

c.

the tech­nic­al de­tails on data trans­mis­sion.

³ The duty to provide data ap­plies to the fol­low­ing data cat­egor­ies:

a.

bio­graph­ic­al data (sur­name, first name(s), sex, date of birth, na­tion­al­ity) of the per­sons be­ing car­ried;

b.

num­ber, is­su­ing state, type and ex­piry date of the travel doc­u­ment held;

c.

num­ber, is­su­ing state, type and ex­piry date of the visa or res­id­ence doc­u­ment held provided the air car­ri­er has this data;

d.

air­port of de­par­ture, trans­fer air­ports or air­port of des­tin­a­tion in Switzer­land, to­geth­er with de­tails of the flight it­in­er­ary booked for the per­sons con­cerned in­so­far as known to the air car­ri­er;

e.

code of trans­port;

f.

num­ber of per­sons car­ried on the flight con­cerned;

g.

planned date and time of de­par­ture and ar­rival.

⁴ The air car­ri­ers shall in­form the per­sons con­cerned in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 18a of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992³¹⁸ on Data Pro­tec­tion.

⁵ Or­ders im­pos­ing or lift­ing the duty to provide data are made as gen­er­al rul­ings and are pub­lished in the Fed­er­al Gaz­ette. Ap­peals against such rul­ings do not have sus­pens­ive ef­fect.

⁶ Air car­ri­ers may re­tain the data in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 solely for evid­en­tiary pur­poses. They must erase the data:

a.

when it is es­tab­lished that the SEM will not open pro­ceed­ings for a vi­ol­a­tion of the duty to provide data, or two years after the date of the flight at the latest;

b.

on the day after the rul­ing in ap­plic­a­tion of Art­icle 122b takes full leg­al ef­fect.