Principles for the exchange of dactyloscopic data
1. The digitalisation of dactyloscopic data and their transmission to the other Member States shall be carried out in accordance with the uniform data format specified in Chapter 2 of the Annex to this Decision.
2. Each Member State shall ensure that the dactyloscopic data it transmits are of sufficient quality for a comparison by the automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS).
3. The transmission procedure for the exchange of dactyloscopic data shall take place within a decentralised structure.
4. Appropriate measures shall be taken to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of dactyloscopic data being sent to other Member States, including their encryption.
5. The Member States shall use Member State codes in accordance with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard.
Search capacities for dactyloscopic data
1. Each Member State shall ensure that its search requests do not exceed the search capacities specified by the requested Member State. Member States shall submit declarations as referred to in Article 18(2) to the General Secretariat of the Council in which they lay down their maximum search capacities per day for dactyloscopic data of identified persons and for dactyloscopic data of persons not yet identified.
2. The maximum numbers of candidates accepted for verification per transmission are set out in Chapter 2 of the Annex to this Decision.
Rules for requests and answers in connection with dactyloscopic data
1. The requested Member State shall check the quality of the transmitted dactyloscopic data without delay by a fully automated procedure. Should the data be unsuitable for an automated comparison, the requested Member State shall inform the requesting Member State without delay.
2. The requested Member State shall conduct searches in the order in which requests are received. Requests shall be processed within 24 hours by a fully automated procedure. The requesting Member State may, if its national law so prescribes, ask for accelerated processing of its requests and the requested Member State shall conduct these searches without delay. If deadlines cannot be met for reasons of force majeure , the comparison shall be carried out without delay as soon as the impediments have been removed.
