Out-Law News 3 min. read
03 Dec 2004, 12:00 am
The Parliament did not vote on an amendment to the proposals, introduced by the Council of Ministers in October, that required fingerprints to become mandatory for all passports and travel documents issued by EU Member States.
The Regulation is a development of the controversial Schengen Information System, which enables enforcement agencies throughout Europe to have access to a database of reports on individuals and objects, such as cars, for border control purposes, internal police checks and in some cases for the purpose of issuing visas, residence permits and administrating persons that the system defines as aliens.
It became operational in seven countries in 1995 and now covers the bulk of the original 15 Member States, although the UK and Ireland are only partially involved. Accordingly they will not be bound by the Regulation.
The Council of Ministers had asked the Parliament to use its "urgency" procedures to force an early vote on the Regulation, supposedly so that a timetable set earlier in the year could be met, and this took place yesterday.
But the rush for final approval was controversial in that the original draft of the Regulation proposed that only the inclusion of a facial image would be compulsory – and that any second biometric would be optional.
In October, however, the Council of Ministers altered the proposals, requiring two biometric identifiers on each newly issued passport. According to privacy watchdog StateWatch, such a revised proposal would normally be considered by a Parliamentary Committee before being put to a full Parliamentary vote.
In the end the Parliament voted only on the original proposal set by the Commission, endorsing the Commission's view that only the facial image should be obligatory. Additional biometrics, said the Parliament, would be left to the discretion of Member States.
But the Parliament opposed the setting up of a central database of European Union passports and travel documents containing all EU passport holders' biometric and other data. Such a database, said the Parliament, would increase the risk of abuse and function creep.
The non-binding resolution restricts access to the data to competent authorities in the Member States, and explicitly limits the use of biometrics to verifying the authenticity of the document and the identity of the passport holder.
In addition, the resolution prevents the coming into force of the proposals until such time as "the national data protection authorities have adequate investigative powers and resources to see to the correct implementation of the regulation's data protection requirements".
This, according to the Parliament, means that the deadline for implementing the Regulation should be extended to 18 months after the technical requirements have been approved, and consequently that the US should also extend the deadline for its Visa Waiver Scheme.
The US Visa Waiver Scheme is very influential in the drive towards biometrics in passports. At present it is due to be enforced in the US from October 2005, by which time passports granted to visitors from countries currently entitled to visit the US without first obtaining a visa – including the EU countries – must contain biometric identifiers.
According to civil liberties group European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Parliamentary vote is unlikely to have any effect on the Council of Ministers, which, in the guise of the Council of European Justice and Home Affairs Ministers, is expected to adopt its amended Regulation today.
This, says EDRi, "will be the last step of a procedure that has exploited the democratic deficit of the European Union to an unheard extreme."
The group accuses the Council of blackmailing the Parliament's Conference of Presidents, which rules on agenda issues, in order to push the Regulation towards a vote despite major amendments to its terms.
"If the Presidents had refused, the Council threatened to delay the introduction of the co-decision procedure for immigration and asylum issues," said EDRi. "And if Parliament had decided to refer the new proposal back to the LIBE committee, [the Parliamentary body charged with reporting on the proposals] the Council announced it would just completely ignore Parliament, under some obscure procedure."
Similar allegations were made recently in an open letter condemning the proposals sent to the European Parliament by privacy groups Privacy International, Statewatch and EDRi, and endorsed by 70 groups, 9 national data protection regulators and over 200 individuals.