Italy must fingerprint all refugees: European Commission

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).