PURPOSE: to
establish a fifth annual report from the Commission on the activities of the
EURODAC Central Unit in 2007.
CONTENT: Council
Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000 stipulates that the Commission shall submit
to the European Parliament and the Council an annual report on the activities
of the Central Unit. The present fifth annual report includes information on
the management and the performance of the system in 2007. It assesses the
output and the cost-effectiveness of EURODAC, as well as the quality of its
Central Unit’s service.
On the whole,
this report identifies certain issues related to the efficiency of the
current legislative provisions and announces measures to be taken in order to
improve EURODAC's support to facilitate the application of the Dublin
Regulation.
In order to
address these issues, the Commission put forward a proposal for amending the
Eurodac Regulation on 3 December 2008 (see COD/2008/0242).
In 2007,
important changes in the geographical scope of the EURODAC Regulation took place:
Bulgaria and Romania acceded to the European Union and connected to EURODAC
on 1st January 2007.
The report’s
other main conclusions can be summarised as follows:
- Management
of the system: given the increasing amount
of data to manage (some categories of transactions have to be stored for
10 years), the natural obsolescence of the technical platform (delivered
in 2001) and the unpredictable trends of the EURODAC transaction volume
due to the accession of new Member States, an upgrading of the EURODAC
system has to be carried out, which is planned to be finalised in the
second half of 2009. However, the essential upgrades have already been
implemented.
- Quality
of service and cost-effectiveness: the new
sTESTA network (replacing TESTA II) provides a higher level of security
and availability. In 2007, the EURODAC Central Unit was available 99.43%
of the time. After five years of operation, Community expenditure on all
externalised activities specific to EURODAC totalled EUR 8.1
million. The expenditure for maintaining and operating the Central Unit
in 2007 was EUR 820 791.05. The increase on this expenditure
compared to the previous years is mainly due to increasing system
maintenance costs and an essential upgrade of the capacity of the
Business Continuity System.
- Data
protection and data security: although
statistics show a clear decrease in the number of cases where the unique
search function of "special searches" were run by Member
States, the Commission is still concerned about its use and considers the
number of such searches (195 in 2007, varying from zero to 88 (per
Member State) still too high. As discussed in previous annual reports as
well as in the Evaluation Report, this category of transactions is
established by Article 18 paragraph 2 of the EURODAC Regulation.
Reflecting the data protection rules to safeguard the rights of the data
subject to access his/her own data, this provision provides for a
possibility to conduct such "special searches" on the request
of the person whose data are stored in the central database. To better
monitor this phenomenon, the Commission has included in its proposal for
amendment of the EURODAC Regulation a requirement for Member States to
send a copy of the data subject's request for access to the competent
national supervisory authority. In consultation with the European Data
Protection Supervisor (EDPS), the Commission is committed to taking
steps against Member States which persist in misusing this important
data-protection related provision.
- Figures
and findings: in 2007, the Central Unit received
a total of 300 018 successful transactions, which is an overall
increase compared to 2006 (270 611). After a drop between 2005 and
2006, the 2007 EURODAC statistics reveal a 19% rise (197 284
compared to 165 958 in 2006) in the number of transactions of data
of asylum seekers ("category 1"). Such an increase reflects
the general rise in the number of asylum applications in the EU in 2007.
The trend regarding the number of persons who were apprehended in
connection with an irregular crossing of an external border
("category 2") also changed in 2007. After a significant
increase between 2004 and 2006, a drop of 8% was experienced in 2007
(38 173). One can note that Italy (15 053), Greece (11 376) and Spain (9 044) introduce the vast majority of the category 2
fingerprints, followed by Hungary (894), the United Kingdom (480) and Malta (384). However, the problem of Member States’ reluctance to systematically send
"category 2" transactions pointed out in the Evaluation Report
still prevails. Eight Member States (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Luxemburg and Portugal) did not send any
"category 2” transactions in 2007. No major changes in the use of
the option of sending “category 3” transactions (data of persons
apprehended when illegally residing on the territory of a Member State ) were noted in 2007. Moreover, the report also details certain
so-called “hits” from the comparison of fingerprints in EURODAC. Some of
these hits give an indication of the secondary movements of asylum
seekers in the EU, of multiple asylum applications (31 910 cases in
2007) representing 16% of the asylum applications in 2007 - although
this result must be qualified - and of routes taken by persons who
irregularly entered the territory of the European Union, before applying
for asylum (63.2% of the persons apprehended in connection with an
irregular border-crossing and who decide to lodge an asylum claim, do so
in the same Member State they entered irregularly). The majority of
those who entered the EU illegally via Greece and then travel further,
head mainly to Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Those entering via Italy proceed mainly to the United Kingdom and Sweden and those who entered via Spain most often leave for Italy and Austria. Those who entered via Slovakia travel on mainly to Austria and France. Lastly, EURODAC gives indications as to where illegal migrants first applied for
asylum before travelling to another Member State (on average, around 18%
of the persons found illegally on the territory of the EU had previously
applied for asylum in a Member State).
- Transaction
delay: once again, the report notes long
delays in the transmission of EURODAC’s results. According to the
Commission, this is a crucial issue since a delay in transmission may
lead to results contrary to the responsibility principles laid down in
the Dublin Regulation. Therefore, the Commission services again urge the
Member States to make all necessary efforts to send their data in
accordance with Articles 4 and 8 of the EURODAC Regulation. In its
proposal for the amendment of the EURODAC Regulation, the Commission has
proposed a deadline of 48 hours for transmitting data to the EURODAC
Central Unit.
- Quality
of transactions: the average rate in 2007 of
rejected transactions for all Member States is 6.13%, which is almost
the same as in 2006 (6.03%). It has to be highlighted that the rejection
rate does not depend on technology or system weaknesses. The causes of
this rejection rate are mainly the low quality of the fingerprints
images submitted by Member States, human error or the wrong
configuration of the sending Member State’s equipment.