Coordination group for supervision of Eurodac
Eurodac is an information system that was developed to compare the digital fingerprints of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to facilitate the adoption of the "Dublin II" regulation, which helps to determine which member country must investigate the asylum request.
The Eurodac system consists of: a central unit that is managed by the European Commission; a central automated database of digital fingerprints; electronic means for the transfer of data between the member countries and the central database. Only the national authorities that are authorised for asylum requests, have access to the central database.
These are the three categories of persons of whom Eurodac gathers personal data: asylum seekers older than 14 years, foreigners that are arrested for illegal crossing of an external border and foreigners staying illegally on a member country territory.
The following data is registered: the member country of origin, the digital fingerprint, the sex and a reference number that the member country of origin uses. In case of an alert, additional data is sent via the DubliNet system.
DubliNet is a secure electronic communication network between the national authorities that handle the asylum request. The two member countries in question can exchange personal data via DubliNet, which varies from the Eurodac data such as name, date of birth, nationality, photo, details about family members and in specific cases, addresses.
The European Data Protection Supervisor monitors the processing of the personal data in the database (central unit) and the transfer of the personal data to the member countries. The data protection authorities of the member states (in Belgium, it is the Data Protection Authority) check the processing that their national authorities carry out, as well as the transfer of the personal data to the central unit.
The Coordination group was formed for the monitoring of Eurodac, which consists of the European Data Protection Supervisor and the national data protection authorities so that the system is handled in the same manner. The control group meets at regular intervals and looks into the common problems that occur when the Eurodac system is in use. It also proposes common solutions.