Croatia’s Ministry of the Interior has opened a €1.2 million services procurement to upgrade and maintain the fixed and portable workstations used to capture fingerprints for Eurodac.
The project is described as phase two of the country’s work on digital fingerprint capture for the EU asylum and migration database. It covers functionality improvements and maintenance for both stationary and mobile workstations and is being procured as a single integrated lot.
The tender estimate is €1.2 million before value-added tax. A separate ministry funding notice puts the total phase-two project budget at €1.5 million including tax, with €1.125 million from the EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and €375,000 from Croatia’s national budget. The work includes functional upgrades, regular and adaptive maintenance, and changes to the Fingerprint Manager application for new data categories.
National enrollment equipment is an important part of Eurodac even though the central platform is operated at EU level. Member-state authorities collect biometric and identity data, prepare the records and transmit them for comparison through the shared system. Workstation availability and capture quality therefore affect whether records can be searched reliably across jurisdictions.
The procurement follows the new Eurodac system entering operation in June. The upgraded platform can process fingerprints and facial images, stores additional identity and travel-document information, and covers more categories of people within the EU asylum and migration framework.
Eurodac is also connected to the European Search Portal, Common Identity Repository and shared Biometric Matching Service. Those components form part of the EU’s interoperable biometric architecture for border security and migration, allowing authorized systems to query and reconcile records through common services.
The central Eurodac database held more than 7 million fingerprint datasets at the end of 2025. The current generation expands mandatory biometric collection to covered people from age six and adds facial images, names, dates of birth, nationality and copies of identity or travel documents when available.
Croatia’s phase-two tender remains specifically focused on fingerprint workstations rather than the full range of data held centrally. Fixed stations support enrollment at established facilities, while portable units give authorities a way to capture prints in field or temporary settings.
The contract will determine how Croatia maintains that national capture layer as the expanded Eurodac platform settles into operation. A successful upgrade would connect front-line fingerprint enrollment with the newer central matching and interoperability services without replacing the ministry’s existing workstation model.
Sources: Tenders Electronic Daily, Croatian Ministry of the Interior, eu-LISA
–
By Ji-seo Kim
