Brussels, 18/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee adopted its view on Monday 17 December on the introduction of an EU asylum system by deciding on the Eurodac database of fingerprints that might be available to European police forces and the Europol agency.
The Eurodac database was set up in 2003 for the fingerprints of asylum-seekers over the age of fourteen. The idea behind it is to be able to decide, in the light of the Dublin Regulation, which member state is responsible for processing an asylum request lodged in the EU or one of the countries associated with the Dublin Regulation, namely Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, in order to prevent people from lodging requests in multiple countries or pretending to be somebody else, but member states want the police to be allowed access to the fingerprints to track down criminals and terrorists. The Commission agreed to this, but the move has been slammed by the European Data Protection Controller.
Adopting a report by Monica Luisa Macovei (EPP, Romaina) by 41 to 11 and 4 abstentions, the Civil Liberties Committee gave support to allowing the police access to the Eurodac fingerprints, but wants safeguards such as only allowing access to digital fingerprints if the information about the individuals concerned is properly protected and access only allowed for specific cases.
The amendments adopted say that the comparison of fingerprints for repressive ends should only be allowed for preventing, detecting or investigating terrorism or other serious crime when the higher interest of public safety prevails for proportionate requests when it comes to accessing a database where details about people without any criminal record are stored.
In such cases, a body would need to be set up in the nation state to request a comparison of fingerprints by email with Eurodac prints. If the request is authorised, the designated authority would be given access to Eurodac in the country in question. A national body for verification would ensure that the necessary criteria area met for such requests beforehand. Both bodies, say the MEPs, could be part of the same organisation, but the verification body must act independently and not be given orders by the other body. In its 30 May legislative proposal, the Commission suggested that Eurodac should only be consultable if other police databases fail to come up with results.
The Civil Liberties Committee wants to limit the negative impact on asylum-seekers, saying that a temporary or permanent inability to provide useable fingerprints must not be allowed to have a negative impact on asylum-seekers' legal situation and must not be used to reject a request for asylum or refuse to examine such a request.
The MEPs want records to be kept of any research of the database and for the records to be kept for data protection controllers to be able to check that data has been properly respected in line with EU rules. They want all personal information stored for other reasons and the research records to be deleted from national and Europol records after a month if they are not requested within that month for use in a specific criminal investigation.
The vote at the Civil Liberties Committee means that talks may now start with the EU Council of Ministers, which has been awaiting progress for many a long month. Along with the directive on asylum-seeking procedures, the current draft legislation is the only one still outstanding from the five items of asylum legislation (agreement has already been reached on the Dublin II proposals, details of housing and reception for asylum-seekers and the criteria to be met by asylum-seekers). (SP/transl.fl)