EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 21.12.2020 SWD(2020) 378 final COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT Accompanying the document 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 {COM(2020) 778 final}



1. General principles of the ECRIS system ECRIS is based on a decentralised architecture, interconnecting the Member States and enabling them to exchange efficiently criminal records information. ·For the purposes of ECRIS, each Member State designates a Central Authority (one or more) as a single point of contact and entrusts it with all responsibilities under the Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA. ·Information is exchanged electronically between the Central Authorities of Member States, using a standardised format allowing for an efficient and immediately understandable communication in all EU languages and within short deadlines of 10 or 20 days. ·A Member State having convicted a citizen of another Member State is legally obliged to notify through ECRIS, as soon as possible, the information related to the conviction to the Member State(s) of that person's nationality, including subsequent updates (notifications on new convictions and 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. It is then obliged to store and update all information received through ECRIS, and to provide full criminal records information through ECRIS (replies to requests) when requested by another Member State (requests for information). ·The conviction information must be exchanged for the purpose of criminal proceedings and, if so permitted by national law, can be exchanged for other purposes, such as administrative procedures, employment, licences, etc. ·Although ECRIS is designed mostly to exchange information concerning EU nationals, it is also possible to exchange information on third country nationals and stateless persons (in the following: TCN) through this system. The supplementing legislation establishing a central ECRIS-TCN system to support efficient exchanges through ECRIS on TCN was adopted in 2019 and the system is currently under development. The Member States were obliged to implement the system in legal and technical terms, interconnect electronically with each other, and start exchanges in line with the general principles described above, by 27 April 2012. 2. ECRIS exchanges in numbers 2.1. Connected Member States The table hereunder shows the history of the Member States' connection to the ECRIS network.

Month Year Live MS #MS 2012 Apr 2012 AT CZ DE DK EE ES FR UK EL IE LT LV NL PL RO 15 May 2012 FI 16 Jun 2012 SK 17 Jul 2012 BE and BG 19 Oct 2012 HU 20 2013 Feb 2013 IT 21 Mar 2013 CY 22 Jul 2013 HR 23 Aug 2013 LU 24 Sep 2013 SE 25 2014 Apr 2014 SI (test only) 25 2016 Feb 2016 MT 26 2017 Jan 2017 SI and PT 28 The graph below illustrates the evolution of the number of interconnections over the eight years of ECRIS operation. The total possible number of interconnections is 756 (27*28). *only 8 months of ECRIS activity in 2012 The table below shows the evolution of the interconnections between Member States over the years, with indication of the year when each mutual interconnection has been established. 2.2. Number of notifications, requests and replies per Member State The graphs below illustrate the volumes of notifications on new convictions sent, the requests for information sent and the replies sent for all Member States in 2017 and 2018. The table below gives an overview of the most active Member States in terms of volume of notifications on new convictions sent, requests and replies to requests, all together and per each category of messages - in the years 2017 - 2019. 2.3. Notifications

The graphs below present the volume of notifications issued by the interconnected Member States in 2017 and 2018 sorted by new convictions and updates on previously sent notifications. The table below presents the proportion of sent notifications on new convictions and updates during the period of 2012- 2019. *only 8 months of ECRIS activity in 2012 2.4. Requests for information The graphs below compare the volume of requests for information sent by all interconnected Member States in 2017 and 2018 to the volume of received replies to these requests. 2.5. Replies to requests The graphs below illustrate the volume of replies sent by all interconnected Member States in 2017 and 2018 in comparison with the volume of corresponding requests for information received by them. 2.6. Replies not meeting legal deadlines The table below presents an overview for all Member States of the volumes and percentages of replies not meeting the legal deadlines in 2019 in proportion to all the requests received by them, with indication of the replies sent after deadline and of the requests with expired deadline to reply.

2.7. Requests for criminal proceedings and other purposes The table below presents the proportion between number of requests for criminal proceedings and number of requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings sent per year during the whole ECRIS operation period. The table below details the volumes of requests per type of purpose for the requests sent for criminal proceedings and for other purposes than criminal proceedings. * The columns marked with A give percentage of certain type of requests out of the requests for the purpose of criminal proceedings. The columns marked with B give percentage of certain type of requests out of all requests issued. The columns marked with C give percentage of certain type of requests out of the requests for other purposes than criminal proceedings. 2.8. Requests concerning EU nationals and TCN The table below represents the proportion of requests concerning EU nationals, Third Country Nationals and Stateless persons respectively, per year, during the whole ECRIS operation period. 2.9. Replies containing conviction information The table below shows the proportions of different types of replies sent per year during the whole ECRIS operation period.

3. Individual Member States statistics The tables below present, for each Member State: the number of convictions of nationals of other Member States (EU non-nationals) handed down on its territory versus the number of sent notifications on new convcitions; the number of notifications on updates on the previously notified convictions; the number of sent requests for information; as well as the number of received requests versus the number of sent replies and the number of replies sent after deadline - in the years 2017 - 2019. The tables for Denmark, Cyprus, Greece, Lituania and Slovenia do not contain conviction data as these Member States have not provided the Commission with such data. The information on convictions of EU non-nationals is vital for evaluating whether all their convictions have been notified to the respective Member States of nationality. In many Member States the volume of notifications on new convictions exceeds the volume of convictions of nationals of other Member States. This disproportion might have been caused by incorrect classification of updates as notifications on new convictions or by sending a large backlog of old notifications in a certain year. The Netherlands sent data including not only convictions as defined in the Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA, but also other types of decisions in criminal proceedings registered in its criminal records. For France the final statistics on convictions for 2018 and 2019 were not available yet, so the numbers are provisional estimates from the Criminal policy evaluation unit (2018 data) and from the French Criminal Records (2019 data). The conviction data communicated by them cannot therefore serve for the purpose of analysis of the relation between convictions and notifications.