Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic, Migration Office

Dublin Unit

Pivonkova 6, 812 72 Bratislava

This metadata information is provided by the authorities of the Slovak Republic to ensure compliance with the requirements of Article 4.4 (Dublin statistics) of the Regulation (EC) 862/2007 on Migration and International Protection as amended by the Regulation (EU) 2020/851.

As required by Article 9 of the Regulation (EC) 862/2007, Member States must report to Eurostat on the data sources used, the reasons for the selection of these sources and the effects of the selected data on the quality of the statistics. Member States shall provide Eurostat with all the information necessary to evaluate the quality, comparability and completeness of the statistical information.

The reference document used for assessing the compliance of the concepts and definitions in this metadata file is the document Dublin statistics - Eurostat Technical guidelines to Dublin statistics (see Annex).

In 2010 a new information system on migration and international protection (hereinafter referred to as "MIGRA IS") was developed in order to improve the quality of information on illegal migration and asylum procedures and thereby providing statistical information at the national and European levels and helping to boost analytical processes. The project was carried out between 2009-2010 with the use of EU funds. It is a joint system of the Migration Office of the Ministry of Interior (MO) and Bureau of Border and Alien Police of the Presidium of the Police Forces (BBAP). The system was launched in 2010.

MIGRA IS is the basic source of information concerning asylum procedures in the Slovak Republic, which are used to produce statistical outputs on the national and European levels.

See below.

Migration and international protection – Dublin statistics

See below.

The text of Art.4 of the Regulation (EC) 862/2007 on Migration and international protection refers in general to statistics based on the number of persons and not on the number of applications. However, the article describing the 'Dublin' statistics (Art.4.4) refers to statistics based on the number of requests. Commission services recommend that Art.4.4 (more precisely 4.4.a, 4.4.c and 4.4.d) is interpreted as referring to the number of persons concerned by each request, decision and transfer.

Third country nationals, defined as "any person who is not a citizen of the Union within the meaning of Article 17 (1) of the Treaty, including stateless persons" (Art 2.1 (i) of the Regulation), who apply for asylum under the scope of Dublin Regulation.

Slovak Republic.

Since 2008.

Not applicable.

Dublin statistics (Art.4.4) refers to statistics based on the number of requests. Commission services recommend that Art.4.4 (more precisely 4.4.a, 4.4.c and 4.4.d) is interpreted as referring to the number of persons concerned by each request, decision and transfer.

The reporting unit convention of the Dublin statistics follows two main principles:

1. Each person is to be reported individually i.e. in case a request/re-examination request/decision covers several family members each family member shall be reported individually 

2. Each submitted or received request/re-examination request/decision and transfer concerning the same person during the same reference year shall be reported.This implies that one person can be reported more than once during the reference year by the same Member State in the same dataset.

2022 Calendar year.

EU level  - Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person (recast)

Ministry level – Internal Regulation related to Organisational structure

Not applicable.

See below.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Annual

Not available.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not available.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not available.

MIGRA IS is a joint information system of Migration office (MO) and Bureau of Border and Alien Police of the Presidium of the Police Forces (BBAP), which integrates all data concerning illegal migration and international protection into one single information system.

BBAP is in charge of giving permission to entry the personal information and data about an alien. The initial information recorded by BBAP is also available to MO.

Dublin Unit and Procedural department as departments of MO, are entitled to make changes concerning personal information (date of birth, citizenship, nationality). Procedural department is entitled to conduct asylum procedure. Dublin Unit is entitled to conduct Dublin procedure. Procedural department and Dublin Unit are responsible for correctness, quality, accuracy and complexity of input data.

The Organisational and Legal department and Procedural department of MO are entitled to enter the applicants data regarding the appeal process (before a court).

MO employees dealing with asylum statistics are the only people entitled to provide the asylum data to the third parties. All newcomers at MO (new users) are instructed and trained how to work with MIGRA IS. MO has a technical (user's) guideline to MIGRA IS, which includes comprehensive description of particular working procedures within the MIGRA IS information system.

Good quality

• Good quality (extensive quality) - all quality requirements are met according to the standard quality criteria and in line with the Technical Guidelines for the data collection of Dublin statistics (Annex).
• Sufficient quality (acceptable quality) - minimum quality requirements are met: minor issues exist which need to be improved.
• Poor quality (inadequate quality) - the data do not meet the minimum quality requirements: important/many issues exist which affect the quality of the data and which need to be solved.

The statistics collected under Regulation (EC) 862/2007 are used by a wide range of users at national, European and International level to cover various usersʼ needs.

Users of Dublin statistics : The main users of Dublin statistics are Eurostat and EUAA. The statistics are used in several publications of the Commission, as well as in the preparation of regular reports, policy proposals and analysis. The statistics also provide an input to the EMN studies and reports that address specific issues of current policy importance.

Unmet user needs (on statistics) and reasons why these needs cannot be satisfied (at national and international level) : Not available.

Not available.

See below.

100%

Completeness is the extent to which all requested Dublin statistics are provided to Eurostat, according to the data provisions foreseen by Articles 4.4. of Regulation (EC) 862/2007 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/851) and by the Technical Guidelines for Dublin statistics (Annex).

• Complete - The statistics are complete: the dataset and all requested breakdowns are available, as foreseen by Regulation (EC) 862/2007 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/851) and the Technical Guidelines for the data collection of Dublin statistics (Annex)
• Incomplete - The statistics are incomplete: the dataset is available but some of the requested breakdowns are not available, as foreseen by Regulation (EC) 862/2007 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/851) and the Technical Guidelines for the data collection of Dublin statistics (Annex)
• Not available - The statistics are not available: the dataset is not available, that is all the requested breakdowns are missing, as foreseen by Regulation (EC) 862/2007 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/851) and the Technical Guidelines for the data collection of Dublin statistics (Annex)
• Not applicable - The statistics are Not applicable: the concept/process is not used or it does not exist in the country

We proceed exactly according to the Technical Guidelines for Dublin statistics and in case of discrepancies and doubts, we resolve the case by individual assessment (on bilateral level).

Accuracy is the closeness of the data to the exact or true values that the statistics were intended to measure. Reliability is the closeness of the initial provided value to the subsequent (revised) value.

Assessment of the accuracy of the national Dublin statistics, at dataset level

• High = 100 % accuracy. The reported statistics measure accurately the target population, as foreseen by Regulation (EC) 862/2007 (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/851) and as defined in the Technical Guidelines for Dublin statistics (Annex)
• Good = 95 - 99 % accuracy. The reported statistics do not cover accurately the target population and a small part of the targeted population is missing, or a small part of non-targeted (erroneous) population is included in the reported statistics; the bias/error in the reported statistics is expected to be small
• Low = 80 - 94 % accuracy. The reported statistics do not cover accurately the target population and a large part of the targeted population is missing, or a large part of non-targeted (erroneous) population is included in the reported statistics; the bias/error in the reported statistics is expected to be large
• Very low = less than 80 % accuracy. The reported statistics do not cover accurately the target population and a very large part of the targeted population is missing, or a very large part of non-targeted (erroneous) population is included in the reported statistics; the bias/error in the reported statistics is expected to be very large

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not applicable.

See the file ‘Proportion of units (persons) reported in the statistics that do not belong to the target populationʼ in annex.

Not applicable.

See concept 13.3.4 Processing Error.

Not available.

Not available.

Not available.

Not available.

Not applicable.

See below concepts 14.1.1 and 14.1.2.

- Number of days (on average) after the end of the reference period at which the country is able to report the first/preliminary data, at the earliest :  60 days

- Reasons for possible long production of the first/preliminary data and plans to improve the situation : double - checking provided data in system and comparing the data with other available sources of data due to absence of relevant information system.

- Number of days (on average) after the end of the reference period at which the country is able to report the final data, at the earliest : within 75 days 

- Reasons for possible long production of the final data and plans to improve the situation : double - checking provided data in system and comparing the data with other available sources of data due to absence of relevant information system. Plans to improve the situation as following:  update of the functionality of MIGRA IS.

15 days before deadline for delivery.

Not applicable.

See below.

Not applicable.

Assessment of possible sources of lack of comparability between countries, due to discrepancies from Eurostat concepts, definitions or due to differences in methods.

Slovak Dublin Unit process the statistics according to relevant Technical Guideline therefore since 2014 the Dublin statistics are comparable.

2014-2022

Not available.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not available.

The Dublin Unit carries out the revision policy in line with the Technical Guidelines for Data Collection under Art. 4.4 of Regulation 862/2007 "Dublin Statistics" - v. 3.1, January 2022: 

Member States must apply the initial validation checks of the Dublin statistics before providing data to Eurostat. These validation checks shall ensure the internal consistency of the datasets at the level of each aggregation, consistency of data between relevant tables as well as consistency of the data between different reporting periods.

The contain validation is meant to check the value inside of the file and eventually to make comparison with historical data (credibility checks).

A common issue triggered by ConVal is the detection of the errors in total consistency present in the file. It is expected that an aggregate (a total) to be consistent with its components. For example, the EU Aggregate is expected to reflect the sum of all EU Member States, else an error is triggered.

Not applicable.

Human/manual errors in the system. Invalid data formats or empty strings. 

Not applicable.

The size of revision gives an idea of the stability of the data while direction is important to understand whether preliminary data tend to overestimate or underestimate the real target population.

Not available.

MIGRA IS national database.

Frequency of the data collection is continuous.

The data are entered into MIGRA IS either manually (by filling in the predefined items - personal information, information about the case) or electronically (uploading the pictures, copies of ID/travel/other documents).

The data are extracted from MIGRA IS´s Eurostat report (which are not actual due to last version of the system from 2010). They are checked and entered manually in the Excel and Excel templates provided by Eurostat and transformed into csv. format. Finally, the csv. files are transferred via Edamis to Eurostat.

The Migration Office in cooperation with Bureau of Border and Alien Police of the Presidium of the Police Forces directly performs regular second level checks of all data inputs into the system in terms of correctness, accuracy and complexity of input data. Logical checks of statistical outputs from this system are performed. There are checks of data uploaded to MIGRA IS at the national level being done in the end of the reference period or in meantime.

Functionality and accuracy of statistical outputs from MIGRA IS are monitored continuously. The checks of the data are aimed to eliminate all registered defects made during the data uploading for specific time. Defects are identified and corrected individually.

Data from the system are checked with the data provided in physical registry diary.

Data are collected from one institution - Dublin Unit of the Migration Office of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic where all data examined and processes before transmitted to Eurostat.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.