News / EU

Italy must fingerprint all refugees: European Commission

Wednesday, 16 December 2015 6:38 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 16 December 2015 6:38 AM ]

A frame grab from footage released by the Italian Coast Guard (Guardia Costiera) on December 6, 2015 shows refugees in a boat during a rescue operation, off the coast of Sicily. (Photo by AFP)

The European Commission says Italy has to obtain fingerprints from all the refugees arriving in the country even if it has to do so forcefully.

The commission said on Tuesday that Italy needs to develop “a more solid legal framework” to allow for “the use of force for fingerprinting.”

“The target of a 100 percent fingerprinting rate for arriving migrants needs to be achieved without delay,” it said, adding that the county has to “include provisions on longer term retention for those migrants that resist fingerprinting.”

The data has to be stored in Eurodac, a European Union (EU)-wide database. Italy, Greece, and Croatia have faced legal action by the European Commission for failing to fully contribute to the common pool.

More than 924,140 refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while more than 3,670 people have either died or gone missing in their perilous journey to the continent, according to recent figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Police officers guard the perimeter where hundreds of refugees are gathered in tents near the southeastern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, December 9, 2015 (Photo by AFP)

Divisions among European countries over how to deal with the refugees remain; while a few European leaders support an open-door refugee policy, others prefer controlling the external borders of the EU, deporting more people and paying third countries to keep asylum seekers on their soil.

Also on Tuesday, the commission said it was to propose a new military force consisting of at least 1,500 armed troops aimed at slowing the record influx of refugees. An EU summit on Thursday is to discuss the controversial plan for the force, which could even intervene in member states without their consent.

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