Slovenia is joining the list of Visa Waiver Program countries whose citizens will be able to acquire new biometric passports before October 2006, as required by the United States. Currently there are 27 countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program, including Slovenia, whose citizens can enter the territory of the United States without Visa.

The selection process of the manufacturer of Slovenian biometric passports is best described as chaotic. The two manufacturers of the current non-biometric passports, Cetis and Mirage Holography Studio, immediately revealed their aspirations to produce a new passport when the government cancelled a contract for non-biometric passports in February 2005. They confirmed the existence of prototypes of biometric passports before the government even issued the first tender in March. A month later, a motion for a tender revision was filed by Prosum company. The National Revision Commission invalidated the tender and as a consequence, a new tender was issued in June that was published in Slovenian and European Official Gazettes. After Cetis won the tender, a motion for revision was filed again, this time by Prosum and Mirage. The Ministry of Interior overruled the motion and confirmed Cetis as a future manufacturer of Slovenian biometric passports, but the "losers" continued the procedure with the National Revision Commission which later in December 2005 ascertained that Cetis complied with the demands of the tender.

After that long lasting and exhausting saga of tenders and revisions, the Minister of Internal Affairs Dragutin Mate, the Minister of External Affairs dr. Dimitrij Rupel and director of Cetis, Ms. Simona Potocnik signed a cover contract for designing, manufacturing and personalizing Slovenian biometric passports. These passports should be available to Slovenian citizens at the beginning of September for the price of 25 Euro. Old, non-biometric passports will be valid until they expire, so there is no need to obtain a new passport unless travelling to the United States.

There has been virtually no public debate about the privacy issues with biometric passports. Although some journalists wrote about the possible risks of having biometric data stored on RFID chips in passports, it seems that the general public is not concerned. The issue of biometric passports was presented as "a requirement from Brussels and Washington" and the debate in the media was mainly focused on complications regarding tenders, leaving aside other important questions.

Biometric Passports - article and video clip from National TV news (in Slovenian only, 15.02.2006)
http://www.rtvslo.si/modload.php?&c_mod=rnews&op=sections&...

EDRI-gram : No delay for EU biometric passports (6.04.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.7/biometrics

(Contribution by Aljaz Marn, EDRI Observer - privacyblog.net, Slovenia )