Article 6U.K.Member States' verifying authorities for law enforcement purposes
1.For the purposes laid down in Article 1(2), each Member State shall designate a single national authority or a unit of such an authority to act as its verifying authority. The verifying authority shall be an authority of the Member State which is responsible for the prevention, detection or investigation of terrorist offences or of other serious criminal offences.
The designated authority and the verifying authority may be part of the same organisation, if permitted under national law, but the verifying authority shall act independently when performing its tasks under this Regulation. The verifying authority shall be separate from the operating units referred to in Article 5(3) and shall not receive instructions from them as regards the outcome of the verification.
Member States may designate more than one verifying authority to reflect their organisational and administrative structures, in accordance with their constitutional or legal requirements.
2.The verifying authority shall ensure that the conditions for requesting comparisons of fingerprints with Eurodac data are fulfilled.
Only duly empowered staff of the verifying authority shall be authorised to receive and transmit a request for access to Eurodac in accordance with Article 19.
Only the verifying authority shall be authorised to forward requests for comparison of fingerprints to the National Access Point.