Eurodac Processes 1.1 Million Fingerprint Sets in 2025
Jun 19, 2026
Category: Border and Security EU News
The European Union’s asylum fingerprint database handled more than 1.1 million data sets last year, even as overall use of the system dropped sharply.
eu-LISA, the EU agency that runs Eurodac, published its Annual Statistics Report 2025 on 9 June 2026. The report covers how Member States, associated countries and Europol used the system across the year.
Transmissions to the Eurodac Central System fell 18% compared with 2024. The system compares fingerprint data under the Eurodac Regulation, supporting the EU’s asylum and migration framework.
Volume drops but database keeps growing
The decline in transmissions did not shrink the stored archive. By the end of 2025, the Central System held 7.1 million fingerprint data sets.
Most of that total, 6.8 million sets, related to applications for international protection. Around 200,000 linked to irregular crossings of external borders.
So, while fewer records arrived during the year, the overall pool of biometric data continued to expand. That gap between annual flow and stored volume gives a sense of how much the system has accumulated since it began operating.
Asylum claims dominate data
Applications for international protection accounted for the largest single category of new applications in 2025. They accounted for 686,054 data sets, or 60% of everything sent to Eurodac.
The next two categories trailed well behind. Records of people found illegally staying in a Member State totalled 283,879 transmissions.
Irregular crossings of the Schengen external borders accounted for 171,227 data sets. Together, the three categories show where the system’s workload is concentrated over the year.
Cross-border hits reveal repeat movement
Eurodac does more than store prints. It checks new records against existing ones, and those checks generated heavy traffic in 2025.
The system produced more than 210,000 foreign hits between asylum applications. Each hit flags a case where someone had already applied for international protection in another participating country.
A further 67,000 foreign hits linked asylum applications to earlier irregular border crossings. More than 130,000 hits involved people found to be illegally staying after applying for protection elsewhere.
These matches feed the Dublin system, which determines the country responsible for examining an asylum claim. The numbers point to substantial repeat movement of people across the bloc’s internal frontiers.
Five countries carry most of load
The data was far from evenly spread across Europe. Italy, Germany, Greece, Spain and France sent the highest volumes in 2025.
Between them, those five countries accounted for almost three-quarters of all data transmitted to the Central System. The concentration mirrors the front-line position of southern and central states on the main migration routes.
Police searches stay rare
Law enforcement access to Eurodac remained a fraction of overall activity. During 2025, designated national authorities and Europol carried out 1,103 comparative fingerprint searches.
Those searches target the prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences and other serious crimes. The Eurodac Regulation sets strict conditions on when they can take place.
The figure represented less than 0.1% of the system’s annual traffic. The report frames police use as a narrow, tightly controlled function rather than a routine one.
A wider data network
Eurodac has run since 2003 and counts among the EU’s large-scale information systems for migration and asylum. eu-LISA manages it alongside other border and security databases.
Two newer systems now share that architecture. The Entry/Exit System (EES) became fully operational on 10 April 2026, and the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is due to start in the last quarter of 2026.
The EES records short-stay crossings by non-EU nationals at the external borders. ETIAS pre-screens visa-exempt travellers before they arrive. Both rely on the same kind of data comparison that Eurodac has used for years.
Overlapping systems, different targets
The three systems track different groups, though their edges meet. Eurodac mainly covers asylum seekers, irregular crossers, and people found to be staying illegally, while the EES and ETIAS focus on short-stay travel.
The overlap shows up in the numbers. The 171,227 Eurodac transmissions for irregular crossings and the 283,879 for illegal stays concern conduct that the EES is built to detect through automated entry, exit and overstay records.
Biometrics tie the systems together. Eurodac and the EES both capture fingerprints and facial images, so the EES rollout widens systematic biometric collection at the borders on top of Eurodac’s 7.1 million stored sets.
The timing matters when reading the 18% fall. The 2025 figures closed before the EES went fully live and before ETIAS begins, and the report does not state a cause for the decline, so any link to the new systems stays unproven.
Long-term migrants largely outside net
Settled workers and residents sit mostly beyond the reach of the two travel systems. The EES exempts holders of residence permits and long-stay visas, non-EU family members of EU nationals, and several work, study and research categories.
That leaves Eurodac as the system with the most direct bearing on asylum seekers and irregular migrants. For that group, the 2025 statistics, including the 686,054 protection-related transmissions, carry more weight than the arrival of the EES or ETIAS.
A quieter year for a busy system
The 2025 report shows a system handling less annual traffic while sitting on a far larger stored archive and producing heavy cross-border matching. Eurodac kept its place at the centre of the EU’s asylum and migration data network, even with transmissions down across the board.
What the figures do not settle is where the decline came from, or how the picture will shift once the EES and ETIAS reach full stride. The next annual report, the first to cover a year with all three systems running, will offer a clearer test.