Ole Sorensen, the Rapporteur for the European Parliament on two proposals for Council Regulations to include biometric identifiers into visas and ID cards, is questioning the proportionality and the adequacy of this measure to enhance security standards of EU travel documents. In a Working Document discussed at an internal meeting with the shadow rapporteurs of the political groups, Sorensen criticises the Commission and the Council for not even being able to enumerate the number of falsified visas, passports and ID cards, which still have to serve as a justification for the biometrics proposal. He recalls that visas are already well protected by numerous technical features: "a sign consisting of nine ellipses in a fan-shape, a kinegram (an optically variable mark), a logo, the appearance of the word 'visa' in optically variable colouring depending on the angle of view etc. The visa itself is placed in the passport in a way that does not allow its removal and use in another passport."

Sorensen also questions the need for two biometric identifiers instead of just one: "Normally one would assume that a trained border control official should be able to check whether the person in front of him is the one on the visa and / or the chip and the passport." The Rapporteur criticises the Commission for not being able to tell what the proposal will cost: "The implementation of the proposal will be very expensive for Member States..." He is afraid that at the end - because of the high costs - Member States will be tempted to increase the costs of visas, which could ultimately result in third country nationals forced into illegal ways of entering the Union's territory. Concerning Data Protection, Sorensen praises the Commission proposal for being 'surprisingly honest' by pointing out that the supervisory authorities are currently under-resourced for their wide range of tasks... "Although very honest, the language used is suggesting: Well, it is a problem but it is one of Member States and we cannot do anything about it." Unfortunately, the proposal is in the Consultation Procedure, which means the Parliament can't do anything to stop it.

Proposal for a Council Regulation amending Regulation (EC) 1683/95 laying down a uniform format for visas
http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Service-Search&...

Article 29 - Data Protection Working Party - Working document on biometrics
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2003/wp8...