By Bruno Waterfield - 4th May 2004
Over one in ten asylum seekers are making claims in more than one country, finds an EU-wide fingerprint database of refugees.
The EU’s ‘Eurodac’ database weeded out 17,287 multiple applications between January 2003 and 2004 - a 'hit' rate, EU officials argue, that is easing the strain on European asylum systems that are close to breaking point.
Duplicated applications incur heavy administration and welfare benefit costs for national governments.
Asylum authorities must house and feed refugess for the average 12 months it take to process a claim.
Asylum seekers must register for refugee status in the country of entry to the EU, but some "shop" around Europe submitting extra claims.
Multiple claim “hits” show that the UK, Germany and Sweden are the most popular second claim for asylum seekers.
EU officials believe that welfare benefits falsely paid to duplicate claims may be used to pay off the organised crime syndicates behind 'people trafficking' into the EU.
An average seven per cent of asylum seekers over Eurodac’s first year – rising to over ten per cent as the database built up fingerprint data – made multiple claims in more than one EU country.
Database officials suggest that the figure of multiple applications will fall over time as refugees get wise to a system that can spot duplicate claims within five minutes.
“The numbers will flatten out over time, this is as people realise they will be found out,” said an EU official.
Eurodac, containing the fingerprints of all entrants, refugees and illegal immigrants, was set up to establish which European country should be responsible for handling an asylum application.
The high-tech database, which fingerprinted 205,902 people at Europe’s borders, also identified nearly 25,000 illegal immigrants – preventing later false asylum applications.
Those refugees caught by Eurodac are returned to the original country of entry into the EU to have their applications processed there.
The European Commission has hailed Eurodac’s first year as a “tremendous success” after early concerns that Brussels would be unable to implement the computerised database.
“There were some that said [the commission] was a huge bureaucratic organisation that could not organise a piss up in a brewery, “ said a Eurodac official.
“We have proven all those wrong.”
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