Brussels, 04/08/2010 (Agence Europe) - According to the European Commission, the submission of multiple requests for asylum and the sluggishness of procedures, are making it difficult to correctly apply asylum law in EU. On Monday 4 August, the European Executive published a report based on Eurodac data for 2009 (EUROPE 10194). More than 23%, 55,226 cases of fingerprints involved multiple requests for asylum either because the request had already been registered in the database or because the asylum seeker had already submitted a request in the same country (this is notably the case in Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Poland) or in another EU country. Eurodac also provides an indication of secondary movements made by asylum seekers in EU. As well as the requests for asylum in neighbouring states, a large number of asylum seekers in France and Belgium had already submitted a request for asylum in Poland. Many requests made in Greece and in Italy correspond to asylum requests already registered in the United Kingdom. The report reveals that the practice of multiple requests for asylum has been constantly increasing since 2007. The Commission is proposing to rectify this incoherence by introducing a draft amendment to the Eurodac regulation, adopted in December 2008. Statistics are also being distorted by the practice of certain states to register fingerprints on the second occasion that asylum seekers are registered. Rules within the Union, however, stipulate that the country where the asylum seeker enters the Community is the only competent authority for processing requests for asylum. There is also a pronounced increase in delays affecting the transmission of fingerprint data by member states. These delays correspond to the time spent between providing fingerprints and sending them to the central Eurodac unit. The longest delay (36,35 days) occurred in Greece. Romania, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Slovakia and Denmark are the worst performers. The problem: the late sending out of data to the system can provoke errors in working out the member state responsible for examining the request for asylum. The Commission's proposal is expected to resolve this problem by setting out more precise deadlines for the transmission of data. Member states made 229,500 decisions on requests for asylum in 2009 and 73% of them (according to Eurostat, 166,900 requests) were dismissed. Italy, Greece and Spain other countries provide the vast majority of data on the illegal crossing of borders. Greece registered the largest number of data transmissions, with 60% of all data linked to illegal immigration sent in 2009. There has been a significant decrease in the figures on the number of people apprehended in Italy and Spain: 7 300, as opposed to the previous 32 052 for Italy and 1 994, as opposed to previous figure of 7 068 for Spain. This significant fall in Italy is directly linked to the “Treaty of friendship” signed in 2008 between Libya and Italy. In 2009, the Eurodac central unit's maintenance and operating expenditure rose to €1.2 million for 353 561 successful transmissions. (B.C.)