Faster exchange of data on convicted foreigners. They will take fingerprints

On Wednesday, the Parliamentary Committee for Justice and Human Rights adopted the government's draft amendment to the Act on the National Criminal Register with amendments. Its aim is to facilitate the exchange of information on criminal judgments against non-EU foreigners and stateless persons.

During the deliberations on the government bill amending the Act on the National Criminal Register and certain other acts, the committee adopted several amendments, mainly of a legislative, linguistic and clarifying nature. The bill will now return to the plenary session of the Sejm for second reading. The government adopted a draft amendment to the act, which is intended to facilitate the exchange of information about convicts in non-EU countries, at the beginning of December.

At the beginning of January, Deputy Minister of Justice Arkadiusz Myrcha, presenting the project's assumptions during the first reading in the Sejm, said that the project is “a real tool for Poland's participation in the European information transfer system (…) and a real tool for Polish procedural authorities – Polish police, Polish prosecutor's office, Polish courts – to obtain information on the convictions of foreigners subject to criminal proceedings in Poland in a much faster time.” As he said, currently the pace of information exchange between Member States and cooperation in prosecuting crimes are crucial to speed up proceedings.

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The Ministry of Justice, which prepared the amendment to the regulations in accordance with the 2019 EU directive, emphasized that the proposed solutions will allow for faster determination of which Member States have information about a convicted foreigner. This will be made possible by the new EU ECRIS-TCN system, which will collect in a central database information about third-country nationals convicted in EU countries – EU countries will transfer to the system, among others: biometric data.

In Poland, the central authority designated to operate the system will be the Information Office of the National Criminal Register, and institutions that conduct criminal proceedings will collect fingerprints from third-country nationals as part of the proceedings. (PAP)

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