Brussels, 10/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - As expected, on Thursday 10 September, the European Commission adopted a package of measures aimed at authorising law enforcement authorities (police forces in the EU27 and Europol) to consult the EURODAC database for the purpose of fighting terrorism and serious crime. Most of this proposal was covered in our EUROPE 9972 publication. Vice-President Barrot, Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, stated: "The absence of the possibility for European law enforcement authorities to access EURODAC to combat terrorism is a shortcoming that the Commission is facing with this important proposal. This improvement in the fight against terrorism and criminality will go hand to hand with the protection of fundamental rights, including the protection of personal data". The measures proposed by the Commission regulate the procedure in which law enforcement authorities can consult the EURODAC database and the conditions under which such request can be made. If we take the example of an Eritrean who makes an application for asylum in Italy but who is stopped in France, the French police will be able to send a request to Eurodac to see if the asylum seeker has his finger prints stored at Eurodac. The police will subsequently be able to find out where the asylum seeker made his request for asylum. Another police authority (different from the one that made the request) will verify whether this request is therefore permissible. If it is, the police will be able to confirm whether the Eritrean asylum seeker's prints are at Eurodac or not, as well as the name of the country where the demand for asylum was made, in this case, Italy. Thence, customary bilateral cooperation will be able to take place between the two countries, so that the French police will be able to obtain more information about the person in question. The new proposal will therefore be used to help prevent multiple requests for cooperation because the member states that has the finger prints in question will be directly identified EU wide. The EU member states making the requests and the member states that hold the data will therefore be able to proceed to a comparison of finger prints. At the same time, a raft of safeguard measures are planned to guarantee personal data protection (the data will be removed by the police after a month if not used) and the protection of the right of asylum. A European source indicated that, “police access to Eurodac will not be an automatic or easy process”. The Eurodac data base contains finger prints for around one people seeking international protection, as well as illegal immigrants who have illegally crossed the border of a member state. (B.C./trans/rh)