TESTA contributes to the EU-wide fight against cross-border crime and terrorism

TESTA contributes to the EU-wide fight against cross-border crime and terrorism and will facilitate faster exchange of non-EU nationals’ criminal record. 

National authorities often rely solely on data on non-EU nationals’ convictions available from their own national criminal record systems. The new EU centralised database on Third Country Nationals (ECRIS-TCN), to be designed, developed and (once operational) managed by the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA), will not only improve the exchange of information on non-EU nationals’ criminal records throughout the EU but also enable EU countries to exchange non-EU citizens’ criminal records faster.  

The ECRIS-TCN database will complement the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), which is a decentralized information technology system. The EU countries already use this system over TESTA, a data communication network service supported by ISA², to exchange information on EU citizens’ previous criminal convictions based on the criminal records databases in each Member State.

The TESTA network is used by EU institutions and agencies, as well as EU countries and organizations acting on their behalf.

ECRIS facilitates the work of justice and police authorities in the following ways:

• in criminal proceedings;
• in the investigation and prosecution of suspects and perpetrators;
• in crime prevention;
• demonstrating clean criminal records.

The ECRIS-TCN system will:

• enable national authorities to establish quickly whether any EU member state holds criminal records on a non-EU citizen,
• contain data such as names, addresses, fingerprints and facial images (which, however, may only be used to confirm the identity of a non-EU national who has been identified based on other data), and
• in addition to judges and prosecutors in EU countries, Europol, Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor's Office will also have access to ECRIS and the Third Country National system.

The work on design and development of ECRIS-TCN is ongoing. As a first major milestone of this project, eu-LISA has become responsible for the operational management of the ECRIS Reference Implementation from DG-JUST as of 14 April 2020. 

For further details, please consult this link. More information on ECRIS-TCN can be found on the eu-LISA’s website.