EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 21.12.2020 COM(2020) 778 final REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL concerning the exchange through the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) of information extracted from criminal records between the Member States {SWD(2020) 378 final}



1. Introduction The purpose of the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) is to improve the security of citizens within the EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, by enabling an efficient exchange between the Member States of information on previous criminal convictions handed down by criminal courts in the EU. ECRIS became operational in April 2012. It is regulated by Council Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA of 26 February 2009 on the organisation and content of the exchange of information extracted from the criminal record between Member States, and by Council Decision 2009/316/JHA of 6 April 2009 on the establishment of the European Criminal Records Information System. On 29 June 2017 the Commission adopted its first Statistical Report in accordance with Article 7 of Council Decision 2009/316/JHA, which covered the period from April 2012 to 31 December 2016. The present Report is the second statistical report of the Commission concerning the exchange through ECRIS of information extracted from the criminal records between the Member States. Its purpose is to present the compliance of the Member States' exchanges with the ECRIS legal framework and to identify any issues regarding the efficiency of the system, with a view to remedying the situation. The Commission reserves the right to take all appropriate action to ensure that the Member States fulfill these legal obligations as set in Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA. 1.1. ECRIS statistics This report gives an overview on the use of ECRIS since 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2019, with an emphasis on 2019. It is accompanied by Commission Staff Working Document SWD/2020/378 (further: SWD). While most of the tables and graphs in the report refer to 2019, the ones for 2017 and 2018 can be found in the accompanying SWD. Some statistics provided in the report give a general overview over the eight-year period of operation of ECRIS, since its “go live” in April 2012. However, the comparative statistical data on all Member States, and the individual Member States' statistical tables (provided in section 3 of the SWD) cover ECRIS exchanges in the years 2017-2019. Where relevant, the statistics of 2016 were used as a reference point. The report also includes data on the United Kingdom, as a EU Member State, until 2019. The report is based on the statistics automatically generated by the system and sent by the Member States to the Commission. Out of the 233 statistical indicators established for ECRIS, a choice was made to publish only the most relevant and meaningful information. In addition, the Member States were requested to communicate statistics on the number of convictions of nationals of other Member States (EU non-nationals) handed down on their territory, in order to be able to provide an overview of the implementation of the notification procedure. The report includes conviction data received from 23 Member States. 1.2. General principles of the ECRIS system ECRIS is based on a decentralised architecture, where criminal records information is exchanged electronically, exclusively between the Central Authorities of the Member States. Each Member State having convicted a citizen of another Member State is obliged to notify through ECRIS the Member State in question (hereinafter Member State of nationality), as soon as possible, of all information related to the conviction (notifications on new convictions), and any subsequent updates (notifications on updates). The Member State of nationality thus maintains a central repository of all convictions handed down against its nationals by criminal courts in the other EU Member States, in addition to any convictions handed down in the Member State itself. The Member State of nationality is then obliged to store and update all information received through ECRIS, and to provide full criminal records information (replies to requests) when requested by another Member State (requests for information), within short deadlines of 10 or 20 days. 2. ECRIS exchanges in numbers

2.1. Connected Member States ECRIS is a decentralised system where all Member States should be interconnected with each other. A Member State is considered connected to ECRIS if it exchanges criminal records information with at least one other connected Member State. All Member States are currently connected to ECRIS and exchange criminal records information with - on average - 24 other Member States. The total possible number of interconnections is 756 (27*28). Although all Member States are now connected to ECRIS, only one Member State is effectively exchanging information with all the others through ECRIS (ES). For the majority of the Member States, one or two interconnections are still missing. The ECRIS system started in 2012 with a total of 173 interconnections out of 756 possible (with 28 Member States “live”). By the end of 2019, 670 interconnections had been established, representing 90% of the total number of possible interconnections. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal is not yet completely achieved, as not all Member States are connected to and exchange information with all the other Member States through ECRIS. 2.2. Total number of messages exchanged The graph below illustrates the rapidly growing yearly volume of messages exchanged between the connected Member States since the ECRIS "go live" in April 2012 until 31 December 2019. It needs to be noted that there were only 8 months of activity in 2012. From 2 million messages exchanged by all interconnected Member States in 2016, the number reached nearly 4,2 million in 2019 with an average of 348.000 messages per month. All types of messages are included in these volumes: notifications, updates, requests, replies, denials, other replies, exchanges of additional information, etc. The graph below presents the trend of notifications, requests and replies to requests over the eight years of ECRIS operation. Only notifications on new convictions were taken into consideration, without updates. Replies include request replies, request denials and other replies. The last three years have brought a radical change in the proportions between the number of notifications on new convictions, requests and replies to requests. In 2016 the numbers were almost equal for each of these three categories and amounted roughly to 350.000 per year per category. In 2019 the number of requests for information and the related number of replies to requests were over three times higher than the number of notifications. In 2017 the number of notifications on new convictions has dropped and remained at the level of around 310.000 until 2019. This downward tendency is surprising in the light of the increasing number of interconnections between the Member States. As indicated in section 2.4. below, some Member States had problems with notifying all new convictions. In contrast, the number of requests for information and the related replies to requests has tripled since 2017 – and reached 1 million for each of these categories in 2019. This dramatic increase in the requests for information is due mostly to the shift in the use of ECRIS, which is not anymore mainly used for the purpose of criminal proceedings, but also more and more for purposes other than criminal proceedings. For further details, see section 2.8. It is also a positive sign of rising awareness in the Member States of the need to use ECRIS to request information in the course of criminal proceedings in order to be able to take account of previous convictions, in line with Framework Decision 2008/675/JHA. 2.3. Number of notifications, requests and replies per Member State The graph below illustrates the number of notifications on new convictions, requests for information and replies for all interconnected Member States in 2019.

Similar to the previous years, the most active Member States in terms of the total volume of these three types of message were those indicated below. The figures demonstrate significant differences between the Member States' ECRIS activities and workload. Some Member States request information considerably more often than they are requested to provide information,: e.g. DE (745.000 requests sent, 32.400 requests received), UK (91.000 sent, 31.500 received) and CZ (38.500 sent, 24.700 received). Other Member States are confronted with a significant number of requests, while they send fewer requests: e.g. PL (197.300 replies given, 15.400 requests sent), RO (170.000 versus 1.200), IT (99.500 versus 1.500), HR (63.300 versus 3.000), SK (41.000 versus 900), HU (37.400 versus 500). Some other Member States send high volumes of notifications on new convictions to the Member States of the offender's nationality, while they send fewer requests themselves: e.g. BE (36.300 notifications sent, 5.200 requests sent), IT (25.700 notifications, 1.500 requests). 2.4. Notifications The graph below presents the volume of notifications issued by all interconnected Member States in 2019, broken down by notifications on new convictions and notifications updating previously sent notifications. he volume of notifications varies considerably among Member States, from nearly 112.000 (DE) to zero notifications on new convictions (MT, PT) per year. There are mainly two factors to be taken into account in the analysis of these variations: the size of the country and the number of convictions of nationals of other Member States (EU non-national population). The most active Member States in terms of sending notifications on new convictions were the Member States indicated in the table below. Taking into consideration all notifications sent, including notifications on updates, DE remains at the first position, but the ranking changes. Notifications on new convictions and notifications on updates accounted respectively for 58% and 42% in 2019. In total, 230.000 notifications of updates were sent that year. It is worth pointing out that before 2017, updates accounted only for about one fourth of all notifications. The present significant increase in updates for many Member States should be considered a positive sign of their awareness of the importance of communicating the subsequent changes on initial notifications. The proportion between notifications on new convictions and on updates differs significantly among the Member States, from updates being three times as high as notifications (e.g. FR, PL) or twice as high as notifications (e.g. AT, CZ), through roughly equal amounts for both of these categories of messages (e.g. ES, NL, IT, HU, FI, SK) to updates constituting a tiny part of all notifications (e.g. CY, DK, IE, RO). For DE, FR and ES, which sent the highest number of all notifications, the updates amounted respectively to about 34%/ 76%/ 57% of all their notifications sent in 2019. The first Statistical Report identified two main problems: i.e. (i) many Member States do not send notifications on new convictions at all or send a low volume and (ii) numerous Member States do not send updates on their previously sent notifications at all or send a low volume. These two problems also emerge from the detailed analysis of the statistical data for 2017-2019. However, this time these issues are even more prominent, as they concern a higher number of Member States. Firstly, many Member States do not send notifications on new convictions at all (PT in 2019 and 2018, MT in 2019 and 2017, EE in 2018, EL in 2017) or send a low volume of such notifications in relation to their EU non-national population and the number of convictions (BG, EE, IE, LT, LU, NL, RO in 2019; BG, IE, LU, LT, RO, SI, SE, MT, EL, UK in 2018; BG, EE, IE, LT, LU, RO, SI, SE, PT, UK in 2017). As a result, these non-notified convictions were not registered in the Member State(s) of nationality.

Secondly, numerous Member States do not send updates on their previously sent notifications at all (BG, EE, EL, LV, LU, MT, PT, SI in 2019; BG, DK, EL, SI, PT, MT, LV, LU, IE, EE in 2018; DK, EE, EL, LV, LU, BG in 2017) or send a low volume of such messages (IE, RO, CY in 2019; RO, CY in 2018; SI, RO, PT, MT, IE, HR, CY in 2017). Failure to send updates by the convicting Member State results in the processing of not updated, unrealiable information by the Member State of nationality, including its dissemination. 2.5. Requests for information The graph below compares the volume of requests for information sent by all interconnected Member States in 2019 with the volume of replies received to these requests. As presented above in section 2.2, the general number of requests for information has tripled since 2017 – and reached 1 million in 2019. The volume of issued requests varies considerably among Member States, from 745.000 (DE) to 6 requests (EL) per year. The rise in the total number of requests is due mostly to DE, which has increased its number of requests by over 5 times. ES, LT, NL and PL have doubled their numbers. The main factor to be taken into account in the analysis of the variations between the Member States’ numbers of requests is the number of nationals of other Member States residing in a given Member State. Similar to previous years, the most active Member States in terms of issued requests were the following. Despite the significant increase in the number of requests in general, the problem, already noted in the first Statistical Report, of some Member States sending almost no requests at all (EL, CY, MT) or sending a low number of requests in relation to their EU non-national population (BG, EE, HU, IT, LV, RO, SI in 2017-2019) still persists. This might lead to a situation where criminal courts could pass judgements without the knowledge of convictions handed down in other Member States, contrary to the requirements set out in Framework Decision 2008/675/JHA. In addition, the preventive effect of requesting criminal records certificates for purposes other than criminal proceedings, such as pre-employment checks, will be diminished. It can be also concluded from the above data that not all requests for information are responded to (see also section 2.6.). In case of the Member States most active in sending requests, 5,6% of DE requests (41.662) and 2,5% of AT requests (945) in 2019 were never responded to, while for the UK and CZ the number of responses received that year exceeded the number of their requests. 2.6. Replies to requests The graph below illustrates the volume of replies sent by all interconnected Member States in 2019 in comparison to the volume of corresponding requests for information received by them. The volume of requests received and sent replies corresponding to them varies significantly among the Member States, from 179.000 (PL) to 646 requests (MT) per year. There are mainly two factors to be taken into account in the analysis of these variations: the overall population per Member State, and the number of its nationals residing in other Member States. The Member States which responded to the highest amount of requests in absolute terms (not necessarily the highest in proportion to what they received) were:

While all Member States respond to requests in general, in 2019 still over 42.000 requests for information were not responded to. In most of the cases, the number of sent replies was slightly lower than the number of received requests for information, with on average around 4.1%, in comparison to 3,6% in 2016. Among the Member States which received the highest amount of requests in 2019, BG did not respond to 53% of requests received by them (30.975), EL to 38% (19.564), IT to 8,9% (9.720) and RO to 1.3% (2.347). For PL and HR the number of responses sent in 2019 was actually higher than the number of requests received, which might have been caused by sending a backlog of responses from the previous year. In 2019, the Member States with the highest percentage of requests not replied to were: MT (82% of the requests received by them), CY (65%), BG (53%) and EL (38%). For a detailed analysis of individual Member State statistics on replies to requests - see the SWD, section 3. The consequences of violating the obligation to respond to requests for information can be tragic, as pointed out in the previous points. 2.7. Replies not meeting legal deadlines Another issue is that some requests are not replied to within the legal deadlines. The graph below presents an overview for all Member States of the volumes of replies not meeting the legal deadlines in 2019, with indication of the replies sent after deadline and the requests with expired deadline to reply. In 2019, 190.000 requests were replied to after the legal deadline, which represents 18,4% of the total number of requests. In addition, 42.000 requests with expired deadline to reply were registered. These high numbers, paired with the reference data for 2016 (respectively: 13.800 (3,8%); 13.000), indicate an alarming increase of replies not meeting the legal deadlines. This tendency concerns only a few Member States, in particular those that were confronted with a huge volume of requests for information, while the great majority of the Member States remains under 0,5% of late replies. The Member States having most problems to respect the deadlines in 2019 were: PL with 55% of their replies sent late (99.000), RO (30%; 50.000), HR (43%; 24.600), LV (47%; 6.200), BE (18%; 2.800) and BG (5%; 3.300). The problem of requests with an expired deadline to reply, which might result either in late replies or in requests not replied to, concerned 33% of requests received by MT and CY, 13,5% by LV and 8% of those received by PL. 2.8. Requests for criminal proceedings and other purposes The graphs below represent the proportion between the requests for criminal proceedings and for other purposes than criminal proceedings from 2012 until 2019. For many years the percentage of requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings was at the average level of 20% of all requests. As mentioned above, the years 2018-2019 brought a complete shift in the use of the system, which started to be consulted equally often for criminal as for other purposes (50/50%). The average for the whole ECRIS operation period is 69% of all requests for the purpose of criminal proceedings and 31% for other purposes.

The amount of requests for other purposes exceeded 500.000 in 2019, which is over 6 times more than in 2016. The amount of requests for criminal purposes remained at the stable level of around 500.000 as well. The increase of requests for other purposes was caused mainly by the strong growth of requests made by individuals on their own criminal records – by over six times since 2016, amounting to a total of 356.000 requests. The second contributing factor was the number of requests for the purpose of recruitment for professional or organised voluntary activities involving direct and regular contact with children, in implementation of Directive 2011/93/EU. These requests amounted to 115.000 in 2019, a significant rise from 7.800 in 2016. DE is the Member State mainly responsible for the increased number of requests for other purposes. In 2019, most requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings were made by individual persons to obtain information on their own criminal records - 70% of requests for other purposes and 35% of all requests made. The next highest number of requests related to requests for recruitment in accordance with Directive 2011/93/EU (22% of the requests for other purposes and 11% of all requests made - in comparison with 10% of the requests for other purposes in 2016). The percentage of requests from a competent administrative authority for non-criminal proceedings dropped from 14% of requests for other purposes in 2016 to 3,8% in 2019 (and 2% of all requests), to be placed on the third position with 19.000 requests. The requests for obtaining a permit to carry weapons amounted to 1,1% of the requests for other purposes. Finally, the requests for the important purpose of obtaining a different nationality constituted only around 0,9% of requests for other purposes and 0,4% of all requests. 2.9. Requests concerning EU nationals and Third Country Nationals (TCN) The graphs below represent the proportion between requests concerning EU nationals and TCN per year and on average during the whole ECRIS operation period. On average, 92 % of all requests concern EU nationals and around 8% concern TCN. The share of requests for stateless persons is marginal (0,02%). Although the percentage of requests for information on TCN has dropped since 2016, from 10% to 7% of all requests in 2019, the actual number of such requests has been steadily growing, to exceed 69.000 in 2019. This phenomenon is caused by the significant increase in requests for purposes other than criminal proceedings that concern mostly EU nationals. In 2019 supplementing legislation was adopted, establishing a centralised ECRIS-TCN system allowing for efficient identification of the Member State(s) holding criminal records information on TCN convicted in the EU. Once operarional in 2023, the system is expected to support more efficient exchanges through ECRIS of information on TCN and to lead to a considerable increase of such requests. 2.10. Replies containing conviction information In the graphs below information is given on the proportion of the replies to requests containing one or more convictions, replies with no convictions and other replies per year, and on average during the ECRIS operation period. Since the first year of ECRIS operation, 26% of replies on avarage contained information on previous convictions. This means that in one case out of four the person concerned had been already convicted one or more times, proving the value of ECRIS as a tool for obtaining criminal records information.

For many years, until 2018, this percentage remained at the stable level of around 30%, to suddenly drop in 2019 till 19%, in paralel to the dramatic growth of the number of requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings. It is a positive sign that the majority of persons, being subjects of requests for information related to, inter alia, recruitment, licenses, administrative purposes, have not had any previous convictions. In 2019 this represented over 188.000 replies to all requests including conviction information (in comparison with 105.000 in 2016). The replies with no conviction information constituted on average 74%, and other replies 7%. 3. Main findings ·In 2019, all 28 Member States were active in using ECRIS, but 9.8% of the possible interconnections were still missing After eight years of ECRIS operation, all 28 Member States were connected to ECRIS. However, only one of them (ES) is exchanging information with the other 27 Member States. On average, each Member State has 24 active connections with the others. At the end of 2019, 90% of the total number of possible interconnections was established. ·The number of messages exchanged reached 4,2 million in 2019 From 2 million messages exchanged by all interconnected Member States in 2016, the number doubled in 2019 to reach 4,2 million, with an average of 348.000 messages per month. The last three years have brought a radical change in the proportions between the number of notifications, requests and replies to requests – with the number of requests for information becoming over three times higher than the number of notifications. ·Drop in the number of notifications on new convictions - many convictions not notified In 2017 the number of notifications on new convictions has dropped and remained at the level of around 310.000 until 2019. This downward tendency is surprising in the light of the ascending number of interconnections between the Member States. Some Member States did not send notifications on new convictions in some years at all (PT, MT, EE, EL) and many sent a low volume of such notifications in relation to their EU non-national population and the number of convictions (BG, EE, EL, IE, LT, LU, MT, RO, SI, SE, PT, UK). Not sending notifications is contrary to the ECRIS legislation and may have serious consequences. ·Strong increase in requests for information hitting 1 million The number of requests for information has tripled since 2017 – to hit 1 million in 2019 alone. This high increase is due mostly to the shift in the use of ECRIS, not used any more exclusively or even mainly for the purpose of criminal proceedings, but also – on a regular basis - for purposes other than criminal proceedings (e.g. pre-employment screening, requests on one’s own criminal record, etc.). However, the volume of issued requests varies considerably among the Member States, from 745.000 (DE) to 6 requests (EL) per year. The rise in the total number of requests is caused mostly by an increase in DE requests. ·ECRIS used for purposes other than criminal proceedings equally often as for criminal proceedings For many years the percentage of requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings was at an average level of 20%. With the new approach of the Member States to the use of ECRIS, noted since 2018, the system started to be consulted equally often for both, criminal and other purposes (50/ 50%). The amount of requests for other purposes exceeded half a million in 2019 - over six times more than in 2016. This increase of requests was caused mainly by the significant growth of requests made by individuals for their own criminal records (356.000 in 2019, which constituted 70% of requests for other purposes), as well as of requests for the purpose of recruitment for activities involving contact with children, in implementation of Directive 2011/93/EU (115.000 requests - 22% of requests for other purposes). ·One reply in four reveals previous criminal convictions