Eurodac (BD2015)

Exzerpte aus: Stephen Kabera Karanja: Transparency and Proportionality in the Schengen Information System and Border Control Co-operation. Leiden, Boston 2008

S. 27ff:

According to the Regulation, each Member State is required, in compliance to its national law and practice, to take the fingerprints of every non-EU or third country national aged 14 years or over who applies for asylum. All EU Member States have in place automated fingerprinting systems for asylum seekers. As a result of the Eurodac Regulation, Member States have put in place computerised systems capable of transmitting “images” of asylum seekers’ fingerprints. The procedure for taking the fingerprints is governed by national law but the applicant for asylum must be informed the purpose of taking the fingerprints as provided in Article 13(1) of the Eurodac Convention.

Data transmitted to the central database is classified according to the three categories of persons to be registered. The three categories are:

• asylum seekers Article 5 (category 1),
• persons irregular crossing of an external border, Article 8 (category 2) and
• persons found illegally present in a Member State, Article 11 (category 3).

Once fingerprints from the three categories are transmitted by the Member State to the Central Unit, the Central Unit records the data in the central database. The Central Unit then compares the data so transmitted by the Member State with the fingerprints transmitted by other Member States recorded in the central database. It first compares Category 1 against Category 1 and if a hit is returned,36 it means that the fingerprints of an asylum seeker have been recognised by the Central Unit as a match against the stored fingerprints of an existing asylum applicant. This hit is referred to as ‘local’ when the asylum seeker has already applied for asylum in the same Member States and ‘foreign’ when he/she has already applied for asylum in another state. Then it compares Category 1 against Category 2 and if a hit is returned, it means that the fingerprints of an asylum seeker match the stored fingerprints of an alien who has illegally crossed the border and who could not be turned back. Finally, the Central Unit compares Category 3 against Category 1 data and if a hit is returned, it means that the fingerprints of an alien found illegally present within a Member State are being recognised by the Central Unit as a match against the stored fingerprints of an asylum seeker.

Only data transmitted under Articles 5 and 8 are to be recorded in the central database. Data transmitted under Article 11 are to be erased and the transmission media destroyed once the results of the comparison have been transmitted to the Member State of origin.

Article 5 of the Regulation deals with the data for asylum seekers recorded in the central database. The data include:

• the Member State of origin, place and data of the application for asylum;
• the fingerprints data;
• sex;
• reference number used by the Member State of origin, and;
• date on which the fingerprints were taken.

Other data are:

• the date on which the data was transmitted to the Central Unit;
• date on which the data were entered in the central database, and;
• details in respect of the recipient(s) of the data transmitted and the date(s) of transmission(s).

Article 8 deals with data for persons apprehended in connection with the irregular crossing of an external border. The data are similar to the first set of data in Article 5 above. After the data have been entered in the central database and the comparison is complete, the transmission media is to be destroyed or returned to the Member States of origin if so requested after the recording of the data in the central unit. Clearly some objective data such as the name and nationality of the asylum applicant are omitted because the purpose of the Eurodac system is to compare fingerprints and not to identify the applicant. Identification of the applicant is the responsibility of the Member State of origin in co-operation with the Member States concerned.

it is the responsibility of the Member State of origin to make the final identification of data pursuant to Article 4(6). That is, the making of identification of data after the comparison of fingerprints data by the Central Unit. Placing this obligation on the Member State is important because the Central Unit does not make any matching or linking of data to an individual. This obligation is left to the Member State of origin who has the data linking an individual to a set of fingerprints.