The EU General Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on 13/12/2004 adopted a regulation mandating the inclusion of both facial image and fingerprints in future passports and travel documents issued by EU Member States. The new regulation aims at better protecting EU passports against falsification and at enabling better identification of passport holders. To this end, its provisions are intended to harmonise security standard features used in the production of passports and travel documents issued by Member States.
Technical specifications provided for in the regulation concern material and printing techniques, biographical data and protection against copying and counterfeiting. For security reasons, it establishes that a single body in each Member State will be responsible for producing passports and travel documents. Furthermore, Member States will be required to incorporate, in new passports issued, machine-readable facial images of the holders within 18 months of the entry into force of the regulation, and fingerprints within three years.
The Council therefore did not follow the opinion of the European Parliament, which on 02 December voted in favour of including only the facial image as a compulsory biometric identifier in passports and travel documents and of leaving fingerprints as an optional feature. However, in line with the vote of the Parliament and in response to concerns raised by data protection watchdogs, the regulation does not stipulate that the biometric data will be stored in a central database. Furthermore, it leaves it to each Member State to include additional machine-readable information items in the passports or travel documents issued, such as, for instance, additional biometric features.
In compliance with the recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) the two mandatory biometric identifiers will have to be stored on a contactless radio chip. Even if the regulation does not specify the storage capacity of the chip, it says that it will need to have sufficient capacity and capability to guarantee "the integrity, the authenticity and the confidentiality of the data" stored.
The Council regulation will come into force on the 20th day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. A Committee will be set up by the European Commission with representatives from the Members States, which will work out the practical details of the implementation of biometric passports, such as how many fingerprints will be taken, the equipment needed and the costs.
Since the regulation is an extension of the Schengen ‘acquis’, it will not be binding for the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Denmark will decide within six months whether to implement its provisions in its national legislation. Being not bound in the application of the regulation and having not signed up to border controls aspects of the Schengen acquis, the UK could not take part in the adoption of the text. In a ‘unilateral statement’, the UK Government recalled that “under the Protocols on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland and on integrating the Schengen aquis into the framework of the European Union, it has the right to take part in the adoption of this measure. It regrets that it has been denied that right. The adoption of this measure is without prejudice to the United Kingdom's legal position, and its right to take such legal steps in accordance with that position as it considers necessary". The UK is expected to introduce its own requirements for biometric passports in 2005.
Quelle: PublicTechnology, 23.12.2004
