European Parliament Votes to Expand the Eurodac Database

On 10 April 2024, the European Parliament backed a more effective version of Eurodac, the EU database used to identify people arriving in the bloc. The revised regulation was adopted with 404 votes in favour, 202 against and 16 abstentions, as part of a wider overhaul of the EU's common asylum and migration rules.

Eurodac is not a traveller-facing system like ETIAS, but it sits at the heart of how the EU manages asylum applications and tracks irregular migration. The reform broadens both the data it holds and the purposes it can serve.

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What changes in the database

Until now, Eurodac stored mainly fingerprints. The revised regulation expands the record to include facial images alongside fingerprints, plus additional personal details such as name, surname, nationality and date and place of birth. Authorities will also be able to record decisions to remove, return or relocate a person.

Two changes stand out. First, the threshold for collecting data from a child is lowered from 14 to 6 years of age, with the information taken by trained staff in a child-friendly manner. Parliament said this is intended to help identify and protect unaccompanied minors who may otherwise go missing between member states. Second, authorities will be able to add a security flag to a record — but only where a person is violent or unlawfully armed, has links to terrorism, or is involved in offences within the scope of the European arrest warrant.

How it connects to ETIAS, EES and VIS

A key element of the reform is interoperability. Cross-referenced, anonymised statistics will be improved by connecting Eurodac with other justice and home affairs systems — including the Visa Information System (VIS), ETIAS and the Entry/Exit System (EES) — to give policymakers a clearer picture of migration into the EU. A new, separate category will also record when a person has been disembarked following a search-and-rescue operation, used for statistical purposes.

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Background and next steps

Established in 2000 and last reformed in 2013, Eurodac is administered by the EU agency eu-LISA and currently operates across 31 countries — all 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. National police authorities and Europol can already access it to investigate serious crimes.

Following the Parliament's vote, the new rules still had to be formally approved by the Council. The regulation enters into force 20 days after publication in the EU Official Journal and starts applying two years later. For visa-free visitors, the most directly relevant of the EU's new systems remains ETIAS — our ETIAS overview explains how that authorisation works.