Brussels, 14/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - EURODAC, a system for the comparison of fingerprints of asylum applicants and certain groups of illegal immigrants, will become operational on 15 January (at 11H in Brussels). The aim of this database is to prevent the application for asylum to be made by someone in several different Member States. This help to apply the "Dublin Convention" for determining which State is responsible for which asylum application (then Dublin II which will soon replace it, see EUROPE 20 December p 7). Up till now, this Convention had only very partially obtained its objectives because of the lack of sufficient data, explains Jean-Louis de Brouwer, Head of the Asylum and Immigration Unit at the Commission. This Unit believes that 10%-20% of multiple asylum demands ("asylum shopping") out of the 400,000 or so demands made for asylum every year. The Eurodac system will be employed in all EU Member States (with the exception of Denmark), as well as Norway and Iceland, given that these countries are associated to the Dublin Convention. Each participating State will promptly take the fingerprints of all fingers of every asylum seeker over the age of 14 or who is taken into custody for not having the right papers, as soon as they cross the border of a Member States, except if in the second case the person is immediately sent back. Details of asylum seekers will be kept for 10 years and for 2 years for illegal immigrants stopped at the borders. Member States will also be able to compare the fingerprints of foreigners who are illegal and who have been caught on their territory by the central database but these details will not be kept on the central database. This system should enable verification if an asylum seeker has got into EU territory via another Member State. In this case, according to rules by the Convention and the Dublin regulation, the Member State in which the new request for asylum is made can send the asylum seeker back to the first Member State. This will apply if the persons are caught for illegal residency in a Member State but who had made a request for asylum in another Member State. These rules are valid even if the asylum request has been rejected. Access to this system is restricted to the sole purposes stated in the EURODAC Regulation, that of determining what Member State is responsible for accepting the request for asylum. They can not be used by the police. Only the authorities specifically selected by the Member State for examining the asylum requests will have access to this central database. On the other hand, each country is free to use it and the data that they have collected as they wish. The Commission gave assurances that there was no reason to believe that Member States in the south, where a large number of illegal immigrants enter EU territory, will not collect data, in order to have to send back illegal immigrants who went through their territory. Mr Brower explained aht there would be a Commission follow-up. Implementation will cost EUR 6.5 million from the community budget. Each transaction to Member States is EUR 2.76 (see EUROPE 15 February and 1 March 2002).