Member States have responded in different ways to the proposals of the French Presidency of the EU Council made on 6 May concerning the Eurodac Regulation (see EUROPE 12946/19) and the possibility of introducing a specific category for people who disembark in the EU after being rescued at sea.
The group of southern EU countries, the ‘Med5’ (Italy, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and Greece) recalled that they were making their final agreement on this regulation conditional on progress on the solidarity mechanism. They also refuse to allow the recorded data of people disembarked after search and rescue (SAR) operations to be transmitted to the central Eurodac system within 72 hours, asking that the deadline be extended to 5 days.
Several Member States have indicated that they are opposed to a new category for these persons and, like Slovakia, would only accept it if it is created for purely “statistical purposes”.
As regards the proposed category for persons enjoying temporary protection, such as Ukrainians and refugees from Ukraine, Poland considers this to be completely “unrealistic”. The sudden pressure of arrivals would make the records too complex and it would take 7 days, and up to 30 days, to transmit the data for the proposal to be “rational” and not 72 hours and then 48 hours.
As for the new ‘SAR’ category, Warsaw is not enthusiastic either, wanting instead to see this as a sub-category. Hungary is also still opposed to this ‘SAR’ category.
Germany and Sweden are among the countries that generally support the French proposals and want Eurodac to enter into force as soon as possible.
Austria, on the other hand, supports the inclusion of a category for beneficiaries of temporary protection, which would address the problem of registering such persons, but rejects the category for persons rescued at sea.
“There should no special data category related to the way of arrival, as this may be the starting point of a special treatment for this group, which we consider as problematic. In contrast to the newly added category of beneficiaries of temporary protection, we do not see any legal basis for a different categorisation of SAR cases”.
Link to the answers: https://aeur.eu/f/1rd (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)