What is the EU’s fingerprint database the UK lost access to after Brexit?published at 18:51 BST 12 October
By Tamara Kovacevic
Earlier, Prime Minister Andy Burnham was asked about the UK losing access to the EU’s asylum database after Brexit.
He replied: “The loss of immigration control has come with the inability now to access data across the European Union… we are in a weaker position when it comes to controlling immigration.”
After Brexit, the UK lost its access to Eurodac – a database of fingerprints – which allows EU countries to see whether asylum seekers and “irregular migrants” have already made an asylum claim in another EU country.
In 2020 – the last year of the UK’s access – half of the 8,466 people who arrived in small boats were flagged on Eurodac for crossing the EU border illegally.
Some might have made an application in more than one EU country.
Peter Walsh from the independent Migration Observatory based at the University of Oxford told BBC Verify last year that leaving the Eurodac database was a “big deal”.
“We would know that they claimed asylum in another country and that would enable us to issue an immediate refusal – you are inadmissible, you have a claim in another country, or you’d been refused, and that would allow us to make a speedy refusal and then try to remove them.”
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
