| Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000/EC of 11 December 2000 for the establishment of ‘EURODAC’ (hereinafter: EURODAC Regulation)1 came into force on 15 December 2000. EURODAC, a Community-wide information technology system, was created to facilitate the application of the Dublin Convention, which aimed at establishing a clear and workable mechanism for determining responsibility for asylum applications lodged in one of the Member States of the EU. The Convention was replaced by a Community law instrument, Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national (ie. the Dublin Regulation).3 EURODAC started operations on 15 January 2003. The Commission published its report on the evaluation of the Dublin system (hereinafter: Evaluation Report) in June 2007, covering the first 3 years of the operation of EURODAC (2003-2005). Whilst acknowledging that the Regulation is applied in a generally satisfactory way, it identified certain issues related to the efficiency of the current legislative provisions and announced the issues which have to be tackled in order to improve EURODAC's support to facilitate the application of the Dublin Regulation. As announced in the Policy Plan on Asylum, this proposal is part of a first package of proposals which aim to ensure a higher degree of harmonisation and better standards of protection for the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). It is adopted at the same time of the recast of the Dublin Regulation6 and the Reception Conditions Directive. In 2009, the Commission will propose to amend the Qualification Directive8 and the Asylum Procedures Directive. In addition, in the first quarter of 2009 the Commission will propose the establishment of a European Asylum Support Office, which will aim to provide practical assistance to Member States in taking decisions on asylum claims. The Support Office will also provide assistance to Member States who are faced with particular pressures on their national asylum system, notably because of their geographical position, to comply with requirement of Community legislation, by providing specific expertise and practical support. The Evaluation Report observed the continuing late transmission of fingerprints by a number of Member States. The EURODAC Regulation currently only provides a very vague deadline for the transmission of fingerprints, which can cause significant delays in practice. 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. The Evaluation Report underlined that lack of an efficient facility for Member States to inform each other of the status of the asylum seeker has lead to inefficient management of deletions of data. The Member States who entered data on a specific person are often unaware that another MS of origin deleted data and therefore don't realise they should delete their data relating to the same person. As a consequence, the respect of the principle that 'no data should be kept in a form which allows the identification of data subjects for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which data were collected' cannot therefore be sufficiently monitored. According to the analysis of the Evaluation Report, unclear specification of national authorities having access to EURODAC hinders the monitoring role of the Commission and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). The statistics of EURODAC reveal that some persons already granted asylum in a Member State nevertheless apply again in another, or in some cases even in the same Member State. According to the EURODAC Regulation in force however, this information is not available to Member States introducing the data of such a person upon re-application. As a result, persons already enjoying asylum in one of the Member States can apply again in a second Member State, which is against the principle of having only one Member State responsible. Practical changes, the need for consistency with the evolution of the asylum acquis taken place since the adoption of Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000/EC, as well as the placement of the operational management of EURODAC under a new management structure require several technical amendments. A thorough impact assessment examined several options to each of the problems identified by the Evaluation Report. Therefore the present proposal intends to recast Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000/EC and its implementing regulation, Council Regulation (EC) No 407/2002/EC10 (hereinafter: Implementing Regulation) in order inter alia to improve the efficiency of the implementation of the EURODAC Regulation, to ensure consistency with the asylum acquis evolved since the adoption of the Regulation, to update some provisions taking account of factual developments since the adoption of the Regulation, to establish a new management framework and to better ensure the respect of personal data. General context The Hague Programme called for the submission by the Commission of the second-phase instruments of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) to the Council and the European Parliament with a view to their adoption before the end of 2010. The Commission's intention to propose amendments to the EURODAC Regulation in the framework of the second phase of the Common European Asylum system was confirmed in its recently published Policy Plan on Asylum – an integrated approach to protection across the EU. In order to ensure a level of consistency in the second phase of the construction of the Common European Asylum System, the present recast of the EURODAC Regulation and its implementing regulation is proposed in parallel to the proposal on the amendment of the Dublin Regulation. Should no action on EU level be taken to address the problems described above, the identified problems would continue to persist, since the present wording of the Regulation will not be sufficient to ensure a high standard of efficiency in supporting the application of the Dublin Regulation. Member States could decide to follow certain interpretations of their own which might interfere with the correct and uniform application of the EURODAC Regulation, thus resulting in serious divergences creating legal uncertainty. EURODAC.pdf
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