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Supporting Asylum and Migration Policies Across Europe
Eurodac is the European Union's centralised biometric database, designed to assist with the management of asylum applications and support efforts to detect, investigate, and prevent terrorism and serious crime.
Key Features
The system assists national asylum authorities with storing new fingerprints comparing them with existing records, to easily detect cases of “asylum shopping” and determine the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application (under the Dublin Regulation).
Eurodac is a valuable tool for officers deployed at borders and hotspots, but also for EU Member States that, even if they are not situated on EU external borders, must deal with an increasing need to be able to store and compare information on irregular migrants that were found illegally staying on their territory.
Did You Know?
Eurodac...
- ... is the acronym for European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database;
- ... is operational since 2003 and managed by eu-LISA since 2013;
- ... is used by 31 countries (27 EU Member States and 4 Schengen Area Associated Countries: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein), as well as EU law enforcement agency Europol;
- ... currently stores over 7 million fingerprint records and can process up to 24,000 transactions daily.
Future Development
The EU's New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which entered into force in June 2024, introduces comprehensive reforms to the EU's migration and asylum policies. A key component of this pact is the modernisation of Eurodac.
To ensure secure external borders whilst respecting fundamental rights and, most importantly, that no EU country would be left alone under pressure, Eurodac is to be fully reshaped into a fully fledged database that will further support EU Member States in matters related to asylum, resettlement and irregular migration.
The new Eurodac will focus on applicants rather than applications, include new categories of persons for whom data will be stored, facilitate relocation and better monitoring of returnees, track support for voluntary departure and reintegration.
Read more about Eurodac and eu-LISA's core activities on our Discover eu-LISA portal
