Asylum: Eurodac for the comparison fo fingerprints of applicants. Dublin Convention

In adopting the report by Mrs Hedy d'ANCONA (PSE, NL) on the Eurodac system, the European Parliament approved the draft Council act with the following amendments: - the system must be administered by the Commission, - stricter, binding limits must be set for its use. Fingerprints and other personal data held in the system may be processed in Eurodac only for the purposes set out in the Dublin Convention, - on no account may the use of the system be extended to cover wider areas, - the list of data provided for by the proposal must not under any circumstances be extended to include other types of information, either by means of a protocol to the convention, or in any other way, - the data may be held for only 5 years rather than 10 from the date on which the fingerprints were last taken, - if an asylum-seeker has been recognized under the 1951 Geneva Convention, the data concerning him must be removed from the Central Unit of Eurodac within one month, - the joint supervisory authority must have enough staff with adequate training, - the European Parliament should appoint a 'European protector of data on citizens', who would consider complaints and have access to the system and to the meetings of the joint supervisory authority, - the Convention concerning the establishment of Eurodac should be replaced with a Regulation if it has not been ratified by the majority of the Member States by the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty. At any event, the Commission must submit a proposal for replacing the Convention within five years of its entry into force.�