# Recital (33)

The use of those systems for the purpose of law enforcement should therefore be prohibited, except in exhaustively 
listed and narrowly defined situations, where the use is strictly necessary to achieve a substantial public interest, the 
importance of which outweighs the risks. Those situations involve the search for certain victims of crime including 
missing persons; certain threats to the life or to the physical safety of natural persons or of a terrorist attack; and the 
localisation or identification of perpetrators or suspects of the criminal offences listed in an annex to this Regulation, 
where those criminal offences are punishable in the Member State concerned by a custodial sentence or a detention 
commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 
2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of 
the Council (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) (OJ L 149, 11.6.2005, p. 22).

order for a maximum period of at least four years and as they are defined in the law of that Member State. Such 
a threshold for the custodial sentence or detention order in accordance with national law contributes to ensuring 
that the offence should be serious enough to potentially justify the use of ‘real-time’ remote biometric identification 
systems. Moreover, the list of criminal offences provided in an annex to this Regulation is based on the 32 criminal 
offences listed in the Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA (18), taking into account that some of those 
offences are, in practice, likely to be more relevant than others, in that the recourse to ‘real-time’ remote biometric 
identification could, foreseeably, be necessary and proportionate to highly varying degrees for the practical pursuit 
of the localisation or identification of a perpetrator or suspect of the different criminal offences listed and having 
regard to the likely differences in the seriousness, probability and scale of the harm or possible negative 
consequences. An imminent threat to life or the physical safety of natural persons could also result from a serious 
disruption of critical infrastructure, as defined in Article 2, point (4) of Directive (EU) 2022/2557 of the European 
Parliament and of the Council (19), where the disruption or destruction of such critical infrastructure would result in 
an imminent threat to life or the physical safety of a person, including through serious harm to the provision of basic 
supplies to the population or to the exercise of the core function of the State. In addition, this Regulation should 
preserve the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration or asylum authorities to carry out identity 
checks in the presence of the person concerned in accordance with the conditions set out in Union and national law 
for such checks. In particular, law enforcement, border control, immigration or asylum authorities should be able to 
use information systems, in accordance with Union or national law, to identify persons who, during an identity 
check, either refuse to be identified or are unable to state or prove their identity, without being required by this 
Regulation to obtain prior authorisation. This could be, for example, a person involved in a crime, being unwilling, 
or unable due to an accident or a medical condition, to disclose their identity to law enforcement authorities.

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Source: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act) as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, consolidated text of 27 July 2026 (Official Journal of the EU). This page is AI-generated legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the Official Journal.
Canonical: https://euaiactlaw.com/recital/33