Eurodac (European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database) is a centralised biometric system operated by the EU agency eu-LISA that stores fingerprints of asylum applicants and certain categories of third-country nationals apprehended in connection with irregular border crossings or found staying irregularly in a Member State. It became operational in January 2003 and is the principal technical instrument supporting the Dublin system, which allocates responsibility for examining an asylum claim to a single Member State — usually the country of first entry.
When a person lodges an asylum application or is intercepted crossing an external border irregularly, their fingerprints are taken and transmitted to the central unit, which checks them against existing records. A "hit" indicates the person has previously applied for asylum elsewhere in the EU or entered irregularly through another Member State, triggering potential transfer under Dublin.
The legal basis has been recast several times. The original 2000 regulation was replaced by Regulation (EU) No 603/2013, which lowered the age for fingerprinting to 14 and, controversially, granted law enforcement authorities and Europol access to Eurodac data for serious crime and terrorism investigations under strict conditions.
As part of the Pact on Migration and Asylum adopted in 2024, Eurodac is being substantially expanded. The new regulation broadens its scope to include facial images alongside fingerprints, lowers the fingerprinting age to 6, stores data on persons disembarked after search-and-rescue operations, and links Eurodac to other EU information systems for interoperability.
Civil society organisations — including the European Data Protection Supervisor, ECRE, and Statewatch — have repeatedly raised concerns about proportionality, the fingerprinting of children, retention periods, and use of coercion to obtain biometrics. Participating states include all EU members plus the Schengen-associated countries (Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein).
Example
In 2015, during the peak of arrivals via the Eastern Mediterranean route, Greece and Italy faced sustained pressure from other EU Member States to systematically fingerprint arrivals into Eurodac, leading to the establishment of "hotspots" on Lesvos, Lampedusa and elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
National asylum and immigration authorities of participating states, and — since the 2013 recast — designated law enforcement bodies and Europol for the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences and other serious crimes, subject to safeguards.
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