EP votes for safe and reliable visa fingerprints (Slough Liberal Democrats)

Slough Liberal Democrats <johanney@hotmail.com>

EP votes for safe and reliable visa fingerprints

March 25, 2009 1:23 PM
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

Today the European Parliament decided that children under twelve won't have to provide fingerprints for biometric visas. The purpose of biometric features - a photograph and ten fingerprints - is to verify the identity of visa applicants and to establish a reliable link between visa holders and their passports: this will prevent the use of false identities. Biometric visas form part of the European Visa Information System which is due to go live next year.

Rapporteur Sarah Ludford (LibDem, UK) is happy with the result of the negotiations she led on behalf of the European Parliament with the Council:

"There is no room for the VIS to be a giant experiment, it must operate efficiently from the start. We have therefore pushed successfully for a minimum age of 12 for fingerprinting children due to serious concerns about the reliability of fingerprints of 6-12 year olds as their fingerprints are still changing."

Ludford insisted that, while the VIS can have a supporting role in combating terrorism and major crime, its primary purpose is border management and deterring irregular migration:

"Let us remember that 99.9% of visitors to the EU are legitimate travellers with no connection with criminality, and even 'illegal' immigrants should not be automatically tarred as criminals."

The European Visa Information System (VIS) is currently in a testing phase. It is intended to facilitate the procedure for issuing Schengen visas while preventing "visa shopping" (simultaneous applications for visas in more than one EU country). For the system to work well, common consular instructions are needed to ensure that all Schengen Member States issue visas on the same basis and that the visas contain the same features.