Criminals who flee abroad to escape justice will in future find it harder to remain hidden after European Union countries today agreed to allow police to share DNA and fingerprint data across national borders.

The aim of the agreement, sealed by EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg, is also “to introduce procedures for promoting fast, efficient and inexpensive means of data exchange”.

Aside from biometric data, police will also be able to share vehicle registration information, all via a contact point in each country. Police in different EU states will be able to set up joint, cross-border operations.

States will have three years to make their databases available. Britain has by far the largest database of DNA profiles in Europe, and is therefore likely to benefit from the system proportionally more.

“This is an important day,” said Wolfgang Schaueble, the German Interior Minister, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency until the end of the month. “This provides us with an important source of information”.

Until recently, exchanging DNA evidence across national borders took place under the auspices of Interpol.

Today's agreement extends most of the treaty of Prum - a successful police co-operation deal that has so far been signed by Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain - to all 27 EU countries.

Herr Schaueble said that Austria had reported “sensational breakthroughs” since it began using the system, reporting more than 1,000 data match-ups in six weeks.

To protect privacy, a “hit/no hit” system will be introduced, under which police will at first only be told whether, for example, a DNA sample that they are studying matches one held in the database of another EU country. They will then have to request further information.

Franco Frattini, the EU Justice Commissioner, said today's agreement demonstrated how a productive agreement between a few countries could quickly be introduced EU-wide. “This will make the EU a safer area,” he said.

At Britain and Ireland's request, police will not be able to take action in another EU country after entry in pursuit of suspects. They will however be able to be deployed for major sporting and other events wearing their national uniforms and carrying weapons, an arrangement used to good effect by Germany when it hosted last year’s football World Cup.

Joan Ryan, a Home Office minister, welcomed the agreement.

“Criminals do not respect borders,” she told the EU ministers. “It is therefore vitally important that our law enforcement authorities have the tools available to obtain information held by other EU countries as quickly as possible to help with the investigation and prevention of crime."

But David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, was scathing. "This is a serious development which we strongly object to," he said. "It is typical of incompetent Home Office ministers to give away powers like this without thinking through the consequences. How exactly will our European counterparts ensure that the personal details of British citizens remain safe, especially given the treaty is not restricted to information held on criminal offenders?

In their Luxembourg meeting, ministers also finalised a deal to control who can enter Europe, by setting up a common database for visa applicants’ pictures and fingerprints. The visa database will store from mid 2009 the personal and biometric data - digitalised photos and fingerprints - of up to 70 million people applying for visas, the European Commission said.

One country would be able to know if someone had already been granted or denied a visa in another, and whether the person had overstayed their time in the bloc.

The visa scheme will only apply to states in the so-called “Schengen”, area, a region of 13 EU countries plus Norway and Iceland with no internal border checks. Britain has not signed up to the Schengen agreement.

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