THE EU: The prospect of European Union passports containing fingerprint identification moved a step closer yesterday, despite the protests of Statewatch, the civil liberties campaign group.
The European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, Mr Antonio Vitorino, outlined his proposal for an EU regulation to yesterday's meeting of ministers from the member-states, chaired by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell. The proposal, approved by the College of Commissioners on Wednesday, has now begun its legislative journey.
Seeking to avoid upsetting national sensitivities, Mr Vitorino was at pains to point out that he was not proposing a harmonised passport and that his proposal was only limited to "specific technical security features".
"We are not talking about symbols, a European passport or European stars," he said.
The Commissioner's difficulty is that the Nice Treaty lays down that the EU shall not have powers to help the free movement of people by legislating on "passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document".
But since the Treaty was passed, EU governments have become more concerned about the threat of terrorism and organised crime. The US administration has announced that it will end its visa waiver scheme for EU passport-holders if those passports do not contain fingerprints. EU summits last year in Thessaloniki and Brussels endorsed the idea of a coherent approach using biometric identifiers.
The proposal for a regulation published this week envisages every passport containing biometric identifiers, a digitised photograph and fingerprints.
"At EU level, a centralised, biometrics-based 'EU passport register', which would contain the fingerprint(s) of passport applicants ... could be created," the Commission text said. Mr Vitorino said that a database was "only an idea" and that a separate legislative proposal would be needed to create any such database.
Mr Tony Bunyan of Statewatch said the EU was exceeding its powers and the Commission was trying to circumvent the Nice Treaty provisions by basing its proposal on co-operation in the Schengen area. In theory, that would leave out Ireland, the UK and Denmark, which are not full members of Schengen.
But Mr McDowell said yesterday it was "inconceivable" that Ireland and the UK would not introduce biometric identifiers if the US and the rest of the EU did so.