Eurodac Annual Report

​Eurodac (European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database) is a large-scale IT system that helps with the management of European asylum applications since 2003, by storing and processing the digitalised fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants who have entered a European country. In this way, the system helps to identify new asylum applications against those already registered in the database. It is used by 31 countries: 27 EU Member States and 4 Associated Countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). EU Member States connected as per December 2021 were: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. National asylum authorities use Eurodac to store new fingerprints and compare existing records on asylum seekers. An annual report on the activities of the Eurodac Central System, including its technical functioning and security is made public yearly in accordance with the Eurodac Regulation (Article 40(1) of Regulation (EU) No 603/2013).