Prague  - If the European Union cannot find a way to make a new database for monitoring the fingerprints and photographs of people entering the bloc work by June, it should scrap the multi- million-euro project, EU interior ministers agreed Thursday.

The project for the second-generation Schengen Information System (SIS II) "is in a critical stage ... It may be that SIS II won't work," Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer, who chaired the informal meeting in Prague, told journalists.

The ministers agreed to commission an analysis of why SIS II is still not working almost two years after it should have started running, with the results expected in June, he said.

And that analysis should also contain a backup plan for carrying on without SIS II, so that "we have conclusions on both routes and can opt for A or B," he said.

The Schengen system is one of the EU's cornerstone projects, abolishing border controls between all the bloc's member states except Britain, Ireland, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus.

And SIS II, which is meant to allow Schengen states to share complex information such as the fingerprints of travellers entering their territory from outside the EU, is its highest-profile project.

The central database, which would ultimately link with computers in every Schengen state, is budgeted to cost 68 million euros (90 million dollars), of which 28 million have already been paid to contractors, EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.

But experts attending the meeting said that the total cost to the EU's central organs and individual member states could already have reached 80 million euros, diplomats told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

When the Schengen zone was created in 1995, member states exchanged basic information, such as passport numbers, on travellers entering their territory from outside the Schengen zone via the computerized Schengen Information System (SIS).

When the EU expanded to take in 10 new states, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, in 2004, Schengen members decided to create a new SIS which would both accommodate the new members and allow them to exchange not just passport numbers, but fingerprints and photos.

But the new system, SIS II, which was originally scheduled to begin operations in 2007, experienced huge technical problems, with computers in the member states unable to communicate with the EU's centralized database.

The problems lasted so long that the EU, losing patience, invited the new member states into the Schengen zone under the old technical system - re-named SISone4ALL - in December 2007, pushing the launch date for SIS II back to September 2009.

And the problems have now gone on so long that the bloc is torn between pouring more money into the system, and scrapping it entirely, Langer said.

At Thursday's meeting, "some (ministers) said 'let's bring it to an end,' some said 'it's a major project and we have to overcome the problems,'" he said.

For the first time, officials also said that it could be possible to upgrade the SISone4ALL system further, allowing it to process biometric data such as fingerprints.

What the EU wants is "a whole string of improvements which could be obtained from SIS II, and if not from that, from another system," Barrot pointed out.

But debate remained over the question of whether EU newcomers Romania and Bulgaria could join the Schengen zone without the technical expansion of SIS II.

"I think we need SIS II and we need to make the relevant investments. (The original) SIS cannot function with this enlargement," Italian Interior Minister Roberto Ernesto Maroni said.

"It's not indispensable to have SIS II to enlarge Schengen," Barrot said. (dpa)