Brussels  - The European Union should speed up its system for checking asylum seekers' fingerprints to make sure they have not applied for shelter in Europe before, the EU's executive said Thursday.

"We are proposing to simplify the management of Eurodac (the EU's database of fingerprints) to make the national authorities' jobs easier," European Commission justice spokesman Michele Cercone told journalists in Brussels.

The commission's proposal is aimed at making it easier for individual member states to check whether asylum seekers arriving in their territory have already been rejected by other EU members or detained as illegal migrants.

At present, an EU country which wants to check an asylum seeker's prints has to send a copy of them to all 26 other EU members to see if they match previous records.

This is so that each country can make sure that the data it gathers are only used in ways which it approves.

But it means that countries which want to check a traveller's prints face an enormous bureaucratic load.

The commission therefore proposes to replace that system with a centralized Eurodac portal.

Any member state wanting to check an asylum seeker's fingerprints would send a single request to the central portal. Eurodac would then say whether the prints had been recorded elsewhere, and if so, in which country, Cercone said.

The applicant state could then apply directly to the country involved for more information, without bothering other EU members.

The proposal would have to be approved by EU justice ministers to come into force.(dpa)