The committee adopted a report (under the consultation procedure) by Hubert PIRKER (EPP-ED, A) forcefully rejecting the Council proposal to transfer from the Commission to the Council the implementation of the Eurodac system for collecting and comparing asylum seekers· fingerprints. The rapporteur pointed out that according to the EC Treaty the Council in principle conferred powers of implementation on the Commission. Only in ·specific cases· could the Council reserve the right to exercise implementing powers itself, and this was clearly not such a case. Moreover, Parliament would lose its right to information and be utterly dependent on the Council·s goodwill. The proposed new wording of Articles 22 and 23 of the Eurodac regulation - on which Parliament was now being consulted - was therefore rejected by the committee and replaced by an amendment conferring the implementing powers unreservedly on the Commission. At the same time the committee decided to reintroduce amendments to other parts of the regulation, which were rejected by both the Commission and the Council at an earlier stage when Parliament gave its views on the regulation as a whole. These included raising the minimum age at which asylum seekers could be fingerprinted from 14 to 18 and a requirement that fingerprints be erased as soon as an asylum seeker had obtained a residence permit, refugee status or other legal status.
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