Brussels, 21/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - About 13% of the total number of asylum seekers making asylum applications in the EU in 2004 had already submitted an application in another Member State or in the same Member State, the European Commission announced on Tuesday, publishing the second annual report on EURODAC, the EU-wide fingerprint database for the comparison of fingerprints of asylum seekers and illegal entrants.
The Eurodac system operating for the Member States (except Denmark), Norway and Iceland allows implementation of the Dublin II regulation to be strengthened, determining which country is responsible for processing a request for asylum. According to the Dublin II rules, a person that makes a second request will be referred back to the country where the first request was made or, according to different criteria, to the country with which that person would have the closest links. This may be the country through which the person entered the EU or that where a very close family member is located. Since Eurodac was launched in January 2003, when a person applies for asylum in a Member State, his/her fingerprints are taken and compared with those already to be found in the database. The Eurodac base also comprises the fingerprints of persons intercepted in an illegal situation at a border or in a Member State. These last two criteria are for now less effective for determining the route taken by asylum seekers than comparison with previous applications for asylum, with 10,000 cross-references compared to 31,000.
Thirteen percent of multiple applications for asylum is almost double the number last year (7%), the Commission states. One should, however, be cautious with such comparisons. The 2004 figures take into account the ten new Member States since 1 May, whereas they did not appear in the 2003 statistics. Another factor restricting comparison is that the Eurodac database is relatively recent and it is therefore logical that the discovery of cross applications increases as the database fills out, the Commission stresses. Nonetheless, the percentage of multiple applications is high, which shows that the desired dissuasive effect “has not yet come into play”, the same source states.
The Commission also announces that the number of asylum applications made in the EU in 2004 fell compared to 2003: 232,205 compared to 238,325. Here too, one must take into account the fact that the statistics of the new Member States are not accounted for until after May. The figure given by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is 282,000 applications in the EU in 2004, i.e. 19% less than in 2003.
For now, Eurodac can only be consulted by the services responsible for asylum issues. Several Member States, however, including Germany, have requested that the police have access to the databases. The European Commission is preparing a proposal on the connections between the different European databases.