1.
The Member State responsible for the manual processing of applications under Article 26 (the ‘Member State responsible’) shall be identified by the ETIAS Central System as follows:
(a)
where only one Member State is identified as having entered or supplied the data that triggered the hit pursuant to Article 20, that Member State shall be the Member State responsible;
(b)
where several Member States are identified as having entered or supplied the data that triggered the hits pursuant to Article 20, the Member State responsible shall be:
(i)
the Member State that has entered or supplied the most recent data on an alert referred to in point (d) of Article 20(2); or
(ii)
if none of those data correspond to an alert referred to in point (d) of Article 20(2), the Member State that has entered or supplied the most recent data on an alert referred to in point (c) of Article 20(2); or
(iii)
if none of those data correspond to an alert referred to in either point (c) or (d) of Article 20(2), the Member State that has entered or supplied the most recent data on an alert referred to in point (a) of Article 20(2);
(c)
where several Member States are identified as having entered or supplied the data that triggered the hits pursuant to Article 20, but none of those data correspond to alerts referred to in point (a), (c) or (d) of Article 20(2), the Member State responsible shall be the one that entered or supplied the most recent data.
For the purposes of points (a) and (c) of the first subparagraph, hits triggered by data not entered or supplied by a Member State shall not be taken into account in order to identify the Member State responsible. Where the manual processing of an application is not triggered by data entered or supplied by a Member State, the Member State responsible shall be the Member State of first intended stay.
2. The ETIAS Central System shall indicate the Member State responsible in the application file. Where the ETIAS Central System is not able to identify the Member State responsible as referred to in paragraph 1, the ETIAS Central Unit shall identify it.