Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 19 April 2012 - Strasbourg

11. Biometric passports

  President. −The next item is the debate on:

- the question for oral answer to the Commission on biometric passports by Carlos Coelho and Simon Busuttil, on behalf of the PPE Group; Ioan Enciu and Henri Weber, on behalf of the S&D Group; Cornelia Ernst on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group; and Franziska Keller and Tatjana Ždanoka, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group (O-000052/2012 - B7-0107/2012);

- the question for oral answer to the Commission on biometric passports by Baroness Sarah Ludford, Sophia in ‘t Veld, Renate Weber, Alexander Alvaro, Nadja Hirsch and Louis Michel, on behalf of the ALDE Group (O-000065/2012 - B7-0108/2012); and

- the question for oral answer to the Commission on biometric passports by Timothy Kirkhope, on behalf of the ECR Group (O-000100/2012 - B7-0112/2012).

  Carlos Coelho, author. − (PT) Madam President, Commissioner Malmström, ladies and gentlemen, Regulation 2252, adopted in 2004, was an important step towards our improving and harmonising standards for protecting passports and travel documents. We have introduced biometric identification elements to establish a more reliable link between the document and its true holder.

However, passport security is not confined to the passport itself: the whole process, beginning with the presentation of the documents – known technically as ‘breeder documents’ – needed for a passport to be issued, followed by the collection of the biometric data, and ending with checking and ‘matching’ at border control posts, is relevant.

It is useless to increase the level of passport security if we continue to allow weak points in other parts of the chain. Examples of this include the recent news story that around 10% of biometric passports in circulation in France are fake, having been obtained on the basis of falsified documentation, or the case of a study submitted during a hearing before the Netherlands Parliament revealing that a test undertaken by a local government proves that more than 20% of digital impressions collected were non-verifiable and therefore useless.

Freedom of movement in the Schengen area is, without a doubt, one of European integration’s greatest successes, but it requires a high level of security. The existence of secure passports and documents that function effectively and efficiently contributes to this. It is therefore imperative to find solutions to any problems that may exist with regard, firstly, to confidence in the process of collecting biometric data; secondly, to the reliability and usefulness of digital impressions for different age brackets, specifically in relation to children and older people; thirdly, to the existing disparities between Member States concerning documents – ‘breeder documents’ – that may be used as a basis for issuing passports; and, fourthly, to the way in which digital impressions can be ‘matched’.

You know, Commissioner, that the Council was responsible for sending the Member States a questionnaire enabling analysis of possible shortcomings in the identification systems, and of the numbers of errors recorded, so as to evaluate the need to introduce a European system. These concerns were included in our revision of the regulation in 2008, so Parliament introduced a clause for its review after three years, so as to enable the Commission to undertake studies and receive the results of this questionnaire.

The question I am asking, Commissioner, is does the Commission already have the results to present to us and, in the light thereof, is it thinking of tabling any legislative proposal that may be necessary?

  Ioan Enciu, author. – (RO) Madam President, the current problems concerning the large number of falsified biometric passports are largely due to insufficient attention being paid to the whole process for issuing them. As is correctly stated in the European Parliament report compiled in 2008, it is not enough to guarantee a high level of passport security if the way in which the passports are obtained is not as secure. I believe that the key persistent problems derive from the reliability of the data collected, especially for children and the elderly, not to mention the host of breeder documents accepted as proof of identity for issuing passports, as well as their level of security.

In other words, there is no point in producing secure passports if they are issued on the basis of false documents. To tackle these problems, the Commission must provide a clear assessment of the current shortcomings within the whole process of issuing passports. I believe that the most important aspect which needs to be taken into account concerns breeder documents. At the moment, there are dozens of different documents at EU level which can be used as the basis for issuing a passport, and many of these documents have dubious security levels, making them easy to counterfeit.

This is why two steps need to be taken. First of all, the number of breeder documents that are accepted for issuing passports must be restricted; secondly, minimum security standards must be introduced for these breeder documents. On the same lines, one option worth considering is to harmonise the templates for national identity cards at EU level. This step is necessary because identity cards are used most frequently both as breeder documents and as travel documents within the EU.

Lastly, I would also like to stress once again the need for the Commission to carry out an in-depth study on the security of the entire process for issuing biometric documents, since this will be particularly relevant to the future systems featuring as part of Smart Borders.

  Cornelia Ernst, author. – (DE) Madam President, our group supported the call at the time of the last amendment to the Biometric Passports Regulation in 2009 for a review to be carried out in three years’ time and for four studies to be presented. One of the reasons that our group supported this was because it has expressed major concerns time and again on the grounds of data protection and also on account of the overestimation of the benefit of using biometric data in passports.

The belief in the perfect form of identification, the overestimation of this method too, and – associated with this – the overestimation of other parts of the security chain are genuinely problematic. The use of biometric data is still subject to this major misconception, namely the assumption that these data are unchangeable and mostly reliable. That is absolutely not the case. These data are also subject to change throughout a person’s life. They differ between childhood and old age. We therefore need reliable and sound studies and conclusions.

People are still busily forging these documents. We have now been able to establish this. As the incidents in the United Kingdom and other countries repeatedly demonstrate, the chips are definitely not safe from misuse. They are readily cracked and, for those concerned, this can result in permanent damage. The standards within the EU also differ widely. The error rate – as seen in France and the Netherlands – is very high. We need to ask ourselves again and again what benefit we get from biometric data if documents are falsified and enter into circulation. Thus, if one part of the chain is falsified and the ‘breeder’ documents are at variance, biometric data would no longer be of any help to us.

The Chaos Computer Club in Germany needed a few minutes only to demonstrate the falsification of a chip. For this, the people of the Chaos Computer Club needed the cap of a plastic bottle, some superglue, a digital camera and a little wood glue, and in a few minutes they had cracked the chip. So much for supposed security. We are waiting for the Commission to present the studies and, of course, also the results and the lessons that can be drawn from them.

  Sarah Ludford, author. − Madam President, I would like to thank Carlos Coelho for initiating this important debate.

It is obviously very important to make travel documents more secure and we have been working on that for a decade both in the EU and of course in the US and other countries. However, as technology advances, so does the ease with which criminals can exploit weaknesses in our system. Most of my work on biometric identifiers has been done in the area of visas, but I have always expressed the concern that it would be a false illusion to put too much trust in biometrics as if somehow once they are captured and used we can have 100% faith. As has been said by others, they are only as good as not only the technology but the competence of the officials running the system and indeed the cooperation of individual applicants.

I think it is a fair question to ask where we are at. In negotiating the Visa Code in 2009, in which I was involved, Parliament successfully required that we should not fingerprint children under 12 due to the unreliability of such fingerprints. Obviously assessments will be done in the future on that.

Earlier this year Sophia in 't Veld and I asked the Commission to comment on the Dutch study that is mentioned in the question which shows that in many cases the fingerprints taken were non-verifiable and therefore useless.

The Commission responded that no major problems had been reported and drew our attention to a JRC study, due out in May, on the reliability of information stored on chips in electronic passports. The problem with this is that it has been done on the basis of voluntary information supplied by Member States, so I think that we need a study which is more comprehensive on failure rates.

According to the Visa Code the Commission should present a report in June this year including an evaluation of the collection of data and documents used for creating biometric passports. We are not just concerned about passports. We are also concerned about visas and fingerprinting practices across the range of travel and identity documents.

Unlike the Commission, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has in a 2010 report expressed concerns about weaknesses in the evidence-gathering chain and admitted that the US system continues to be vulnerable to fraud. If this is true of the Americans then I fear it could well be true in the EU.

  Franziska Keller, author. − Madam President, I very much agree with the criticism that my colleagues have already expressed and I want to ask the same question about what stage this evaluation has reached, and whether it can solve the questions that we have raised and answer our concerns, such as the issues of ‘breeder’ documents and the falsified documents and biometric passports in France and elsewhere, because this is really undermining any usefulness of biometric passports.

Furthermore, biometric passports also have fundamental rights implications. It has just been ruled under French constitutional law that parts of the French biometric passport law are unconstitutional because law enforcement agencies and state authorities have access to fingerprints. Fingerprints are seen as very sensitive data because you can leave them without intending to do so. That of course calls into question whether this will be applicable in the Member States. We have also seen elsewhere in the EU that law enforcement agencies and authorities are trying to get access to fingerprints

Even when all these questions have been solved, there will still be the issue of whether it is really necessary and useful to collect all the biometric data of people who travel, and for what purpose we are collecting those data. We will have to see whether the costs of such biometric gathering will actually be compatible with any use that we get out of them, and whether the costs are appropriate and comparable with their usefulness.

I do not think under any circumstances that we should collect more and more biometric data and expand the use of biometric data before those concerns are clarified and before the Commission can prove that they are actually verifiable and that there are no huge problems and errors in collecting the data, as we heard with regard to children, older people, etc.

IN THE CHAIR: ALEXANDER ALVARO
Vice-President

  Roberts Zīle, author. − Mr President, I welcome the opportunity for this House to discuss the important issue of border security, be it body scanners, PNR or border agencies. This opportunity to debate standards on security and border efficiency in Europe is one that should be continued as a priority. Since this House adopted in 2004, and subsequently reviewed, the Regulation on standards for security features and biometrics in passports and travel documents, it is clear that several questions have emerged as regards flaws in the systems and potential security implications.

I would like to ask the Commission whether or not its research has shown the system to create higher levels of security and ease of travel, and whether it has proven to be effective and cost efficient. More importantly, I would like also to ask the Commission what initiatives it has taken to combat the increasing problems of cross-border fraud, identity theft, and loss of biometric passports. Both Europol and Member States’ authorities have cited stolen passports as one of the most significant security threats we face.

The final issue is this: is technology changing rapidly enough for biometric passports to keep ahead of the technical abilities of sophisticated criminals perpetrating fraud, and is a biometric system being backed up with the necessary level of border checks in order to make sure that Europe’s borders are as impenetrable as possible to criminals?

  Cecilia Malmström, Member of the Commission. − Mr President, honourable Members, the study that you have requested, focusing on fingerprints for children below the age of 12, is currently being carried out by the Joint Research Centre. The issue of the reliability of fingerprints from elderly people was not included in the mandate and is therefore not part of this study.

In order to perform its scientific analysis, the Research Centre needed reliable data from children below the age of 12 taken twice from the same person, with an interval of at least two years. Such data could be provided only by Member States and Portugal volunteered to provide data from its national passport database. Access to the data was granted by the Portuguese authorities last November after the conclusion of the appropriate Portuguese procedure for ensuring that all the data protection aspects were duly considered. For that reason, the study is not yet finished and the final result therefore not available. There will be an intermediate report presented by the Research Centre in May this year. It will present preliminary conclusions regarding the evolution of children’s fingerprints based on limited algorithms developed by academia.

The intermediate report will be presented to the European Parliament by the June deadline specified in the Regulation. The final results will provide comprehensive information on the evolution of fingerprints of children under 12 and the technical feasibility of using them for identification and verification purposes. The final report will also include an evaluation of whether the biometric matching algorithms available on the market now or in the near future can be used effectively with children’s fingerprints. The draft final report will be available in mid-2013. Based on the final results of the study, the Commission will consider proposing amendments to the Regulation.

Regarding the technical issues related to the biometric enrolment process, these issues have been clarified in a decision from August last year amending the technical specifications for passports. Requirements for taking fingerprints are clarified by means of an enrolment guide annexed to the decision.

The Commission, as guardian of the Treaty, undertakes tests on Member States’ passports’ compliance with this Regulation and with the relevant technical specifications. While compliance testing is a standard procedure, it is currently carried out by national accredited laboratories, and the Joint Research Centre has performed and already reported on additional testing of the chips on electronic passports – provided on a voluntary basis because it is the only way we can proceed – by some Member States to the Commission.

Further reports will be issued in May this year, including a report on the compliance of the Dutch sample passports received. If non-conformity is found, the Commission will, of course, take the appropriate measures. We are also conducting a report on identity theft; this we take very seriously and, as soon as that is ready, we will report to Parliament.

As to the last question on obtaining authentic documents, this is related to identity theft. We are aware of this type of fraud and we will report on the result of the study as soon as possible and then discuss with you the possible measures to take.

  Agustín Díaz de Mera García Consuegra, on behalf of the PPE Group. – (ES) Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Coelho, thank you. We must highlight the advances represented by the use of biometric passports but we cannot deny the problems that exist in terms of implementation, especially the weaknesses detected in the passport-issuance chain. It would serve no purpose to equip border controls with great technical instruments if the system has a significant weakness in terms of procedures.

In this context, if we take it into account, the balance between combating crime in the EU, respecting individual rights and guaranteeing free movement in the Schengen area takes on even greater importance.

The forging of documents, organised crime and terrorism constitute direct attacks on our citizens but also on their personal rights and so we must reinforce the whole process of gathering and handling information of a personal nature. We must afford greater security to the travel document, establishing a reliable link between the passport and its holder.

Accordingly, repeated fraudulent practice provides ample justification for the evaluation reports. Commissioner Malmström, we await the intermediate report scheduled for June, and the report scheduled for mid-2013, with great interest. We continue to back training for those responsible for managing the system, along with improvements to and interoperability of equipment and documents issued at each of the stages, without compromising, of course, either the information or the rights of the holder of the passport.

Commissioner, being in a position to determine the scope of the issue of fingerprinting children, which, as has already been stated, is currently under study, is very important. Therefore, I place great value on the Portuguese Government’s decision to give reliability to the procedure.

  Sylvie Guillaume, on behalf of the S&D Group. – (FR) Mr President, I welcome the initiative of this discussion, which allows us to return to the concerns that have already been expressed in the past on the reliability of biometric passports.

We were told at the time that the introduction of biometric information would improve the security of travel documents and would benefit the security of our fellow citizens. A recent survey showed that 10% of French passports could be false, as their production relies on documents that are extremely easy to falsify, namely copies of birth certificates.

In this context, how is it possible to imagine that the multiplication of biometric data and other secure chips is the best way to protect our fellow citizens. The existing shortcomings ought to encourage us to be more prudent. By insisting on defending security at any cost, by rushing into the collection of personal data, we end up whittling away our fellow citizens’ areas of freedom, especially with the creation of databases that could be used for purposes other than in the general interest.

Another dimension that I would to raise here concerns the sometimes obscure, vested interests hiding behind such developments: the manufacturers of body scanners and electronic chips and data gathering and security companies. All of these industrial lobbies have a clear interest in promoting these security-oriented technologies, which, to say the least, is worrying.

In the face of this rationale of saving data on the population that we are seeing more or less all over Europe, we need to be vigilant as regards the risk of violations of privacy. That is why I am insisting in this debate that the use of biometric data must be proportionate to the intended goal. A complete overhaul of the rules providing for the inclusion of biometric information in passports and travel documents is therefore imperative.

To conclude, as regards the assessment carried out by the Commission on the implementation of these rules at national level, you have given us a number of very useful clarifications. We await with impatience, therefore, the various reports, the first of which ought, I believe, to appear quite soon.

  Sophia in 't Veld, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – Mr President, Commissioner, a lot has been said already here about the quality of the fingerprints and the whole system and different steps in the chain, but I would like to raise another issue, and that is the justification for having biometrics in passports in the first place. In the Netherlands, a recent request for access to documents revealed that the justification given at the time, namely document fraud and particularly lookalike fraud, was actually only established in between 20 and 40 cases in the course of a year in a country with nearly 17 million inhabitants.

So one wonders why this whole system – which is extremely costly and which clearly has a lot of shortcomings – had to be introduced on such a thin justification. I wonder if the Commission is going to include that element and that information in its evaluation.

  Tatjana Ždanoka, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Mr President, we are extremely satisfied that the studies, as the Commissioner has said, are in progress. Regulation (EC) No 2252/2004 is to be amended and we are happy that Ms Malmström has just expressed the very same opinion. I will allow myself to return to history and self-citation.

The Greens as a group are of the opinion that the Commission proposal to introduce two biometric identifiers lacks crucial information on important points such as costs, proportionality, added value and security. For us it is clear that such an introduction could represent a threat to security through the risks of abuse, technological flaws and lack of transparency and data protection. This was said in this Parliament on 1 December 2004 and, as we see now, it was providential. We are very thankful to Mr Coelho for initiating this question and the debate.

  Zbigniew Ziobro, on behalf of the EFD Group. – (PL) Mr President, up until noon we were discussing the problem of human trafficking, an issue which generates much emotion and involves tragic experiences for thousands of people, women and children in particular. In my opinion, it is precisely the protection of borders as well as efforts aimed at preventing the forging of documents allowing these borders to be crossed, that can pave the way for the effective reduction of the illegal cross-border transfer of people, of human trafficking. Although biometric passports give real cause for hope, the report does nevertheless indicate that a number of weaknesses exist relating to the protection and encoding of the data contained in such passports. For this reason, every effort should be made to improve technology and the ways in which these documents are used. Thank you.

  Simon Busuttil (PPE), - (MT). Thank you Mr President. The idea of introducing biometric passports was, among other things, to make it more difficult for our passports to be forged, and therefore make it easier for our citizens to travel. However, we all know that certain difficulties and problems have been identified even with biometric passports. That is why we presented this parliamentary question with the aim of asking the Commission to consider and investigate these problems in detail.

Today, we are studying the prospective solutions to these problems. I would like to state that our citizens find border control to be a very sensitive subject. Subjects such as illegal immigration, the illegal presence of people in Europe and the opening and closing of our borders evoke many strong sensitivities, and our citizens have repeatedly shown us that they want us to pay due attention to such matters. Parliament has very good experience in this regard, mainly in relation to topics such as Schengen, which involves the expertise of people like Carlos Coelho, and Frontex.

Biometric passports are another important part of this dimension of security, and it is therefore in our every interest to ensure that biometric passports are effective and that they cannot be tampered with. I feel that if we were to address the difficulties identified through these studies, then honest, law-abiding citizens who travel regularly will be able to enjoy the benefits we can achieve in this regard.

  Nessa Childers (S&D). - Mr President, after the adoption of standards for security features and biometrics in passports in 2004, Ireland’s first biometric passports, or e-passports, were issued in 2006. The introduction of e-passports was intended to ensure better protection against fraudulent use. Personal identification contained in the biometric chip of each e-passport establishes a more reliable link between the passport and its holder.

The introduction was timely. In 2010 an investigation by the Irish police proved that eight Irish passports had been forged and misused by Israeli Government operatives in the assassination of Palestinian Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It seems likely that the passports in question were forgeries of passports issued before 2006, as the biometric data in our passports is very difficult to forge.

However, passports from other EU countries were also implicated in the cases I mentioned above. It concerns me to hear of other weaknesses in the level of passport security across the EU which could lead to similar situations arising again, and the Commission should really take the concerns of Parliament seriously.

  Roberta Angelilli (PPE). – (IT) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, facilitating the free movement of persons within and outside European borders has always been one of the European Union’s priorities, as has continuing to strengthen and ensure a secure Europe. In 2009 Parliament adopted Mr Coelho’s report on biometric passports with these very goals in mind.

According to the ‘one person, one passport’ principle, children would also have the right to have their own passports without having to be included on their parents’ passports any longer. That has the potential to be a more secure system. However it looks as if the ‘one person, one passport’ principle is de facto unfeasible or, in any case, not safe for children under 12, as it has been found that the fingerprints of children under six are not of a sufficient quality to enable their identity to be established with certainty.

Since children are the category most at risk of disappearances, human trafficking or even sexual abuse, the question is: what tests has the Commission carried out over these years precisely to ensure adequate protection of children, particularly when travelling alone?

  Véronique Mathieu (PPE). – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, firstly I should like to put an end to the unfounded allegations that there are between 500 000 and 1 000 000 false biometric passports in circulation in France.

France takes the risk of fraud in relation to identity documents very seriously. It does not treat crimes in this area lightly. At the initiative of its government, identity theft is a crime punished by a year in prison and a EUR 15 000 fine.

The terms of delivery of identity documents have been simplified, which has allowed the prefectures to release additional resources to combat this fraud. Thus, each prefecture has a designated fraud specialist. Moreover, the provisions for making the delivery of identity documents secure have been strengthened. For example, the supplied civil status information may be verified between government departments, as far as possible electronically, in order to reduce the risks of falsification. Some birth certificates are also provided on security paper. The same rigour is applied to proof of residence documents.

The Ministry of the Interior is committed to increasing the security of proof of residence documents via the insertion of a barcode. The traditional processing of an application for a document includes the authorised consultation of useful files, the comparison of all documents produced during previous applications for documents and any authentication of supporting documents.

The security of the document issue process is also guaranteed by the fact that the applicant has to appear twice, first when they make their application, then again when they collect the document, along with the collection of two fingerprints. This is without mentioning the strengthened checks on the renewal of lost and stolen documents against the data kept by the prefectures.

Moreover, France reports the issue, loss or theft of passports to international cooperation organisations, especially to Interpol, to prevent their use for fraudulent purposes.

Ladies and gentlemen, France, like the rest of the European Union is committed …

(The President cut off the speaker)

Catch-the-eye procedure

  Miroslav Mikolášik (PPE). – (SK) Mr President, concerns raised regarding the reliability and effectiveness of biometric passports in the European Union still persist, and we have not yet found a satisfactory solution, although passports have been used in various Member States for more than five years. The replacement of traditional paper passports with biometric documents, which have a built-in special chip containing biometric data unique to each individual, should have helped to ensure that passports were not counterfeited. The historic use of hundreds of thousands, some estimates say up to a million – this needs to be verified – biometric passports and the issue of such passports based on false or counterfeit documents, however, suggests that the minimum security standards for passports are not sufficient to ensure the authenticity of the document. Since this is a question closely related to internal security and order within the European Union, I support the introduction of stricter rules applying not only to passports themselves, but also to the general procedure for their issuance.

  Seán Kelly (PPE). - Mr President, this morning, here in Parliament, we passed the agreement between ourselves and the United States with regard to PNR, and that should help to make travel safer for everybody. It was disconcerting to hear earlier on that 10% of French passports are falsified – even though my colleague disagrees with this. Whatever the figure, it is nevertheless safe to assume that the vast majority of those in possession of falsified passports are probably criminals of one sort or another.

If we can reduce the number of falsified passports we will make the world far safer and reduce an awful lot of the counterfeited goods and contraband, human trafficking and all sorts of terrorist activities. It was interesting that my colleague from Ireland, Ms Childers, pointed out that the falsified passports or the forgeries were prior to biometrics. Biometrics has a role to play and therefore we should do everything we can to make it safer and better for everybody.

  Janusz Władysław Zemke (S&D). – (PL) Mr President, biometric passports are being introduced – we are after all dealing with a process – in order to make life harder for criminals and hinder their operations. It appeared that biometric passports were the most reliable way of achieving these aims. However, these passports are also being forged ever more effectively by criminals capable of tampering with passport chips and codes. Combating these practices is, of course, a task for police forces in individual countries as well as for border guards. I have to say, however, that in my opinion, the information provided today, including that supplied by the Commissioner, is very much lacking in facts and data regarding the efforts made in this area by two important institutions, namely Europol and Frontex, given that this issue should be one of their main priorities.

  Franz Obermayr (NI). – (DE) Mr President, we had hoped that the new biometric passports would prevent forgeries and would therefore result in greater security. However, according to estimates, there are around 1 million biometric passports issued on the basis of falsified birth certificates circulating in France alone. These passports were introduced in 2004 following pressure from the United States, and they contain the biometric images and fingerprints of the holder. However, some of these fingerprints are unreadable according to a study carried out in the Netherlands. More than a fifth of the passports there were unusable. In the case of older people, and also children, it is even more difficult to incorporate fingerprints properly. All in all, biometric passports appear to be yet another expensive, dubious method from the United States for stepping up the fight against terrorism.

The results of the three-year study have now been submitted and we will need to evaluate them thoroughly to see whether these biometric passports actually make any sense at the end of the day.

  Petru Constantin Luhan (PPE). – (RO) Mr President, the public has found and continues to find it difficult to accept biometric passports. It is not easy for people to accept new things, especially if they are not adequately explained. Admittedly, although it seems to be a very secure system for identifying travellers, fraud does occur due to the availability of technologies and different devices that help hackers steal data from chips. People are afraid that, just like bank card details are stolen, it will also be just as easy for data to be stolen from chips featuring biometric passport content.

I believe that the public needs to be better informed about what a biometric passport is, as well as about the security features which it offers. The possibility must be looked into of creating in the future a system where the radio frequency-based ID device contained on the passport’s chip can be detected only by the relevant authorities.

End of the catch-the-eye procedure

  Cecilia Malmström, Member of the Commission. − Mr President, this is indeed a very important debate. We are talking about document security, we are talking about fundamental rights, we are talking about the efficiency of different kinds of travel documents and biometrics.

In a way it is a bit unfortunate that we are having this debate today because in June I would be able to give you the answers to all the questions you have put to me. We will then have the reports and I will be happy to share the results with you; I am looking forward to having a renewed discussion when we have all this documentation.

On the question of false documents, we are of course aware of this problem. We have no confirmation of the figures that have been circulating here. I think they are wildly exaggerated, but of course it is a problem and we are in close contact with Europol and Frontex on this. As I said, right now we are conducting a study on identity theft in general, where this is an issue.

When the regulation on biometric passports was adopted there was no evaluation clause in it, so the Commission has not been asked to do a general evaluation of the usefulness and effectiveness of biometrics. However, if this is a very strong wish from the European Parliament, we would of course consider that issue seriously.

So thank you very much for the debate. I think we will get back to it very soon, when hopefully I can bring some more concrete results to the debate here.

  President. – The debate is closed.

Written statements (Rule 149)

  Andreas Mölzer (NI), in writing. – (DE) Biometric passports are intended to prevent stolen or falsified passports from being used to commit a crime. Moreover, to support cross-border investigations, biometric data are intended to be entered into the Europe-wide, next generation police information system. The use of biometrics is intended to create an additional obstacle for forgeries. Of course, the technical support at border controls could be time-saving for travellers and border control officers. That is the theory, at least. In practice, experts consider passport biometrics to be an unsuitable means of fighting terrorism – the likelihood of someone slipping through unnoticed may even increase. Combating terrorism was, after all, one of the main reasons for introducing biometric passports. SIS II is still not working. Then there are more than enough countries with traditional passports that are easy to forge, not to mention the poorly guarded borders. However, it is precisely these that are misused for the purpose of illegal immigration. It seems that nothing much has changed with regard to the large difference in security standards within the EU, even with the introduction of biometric passports. Thus, we need to eradicate sources of error and the opportunities for forging passports and strengthen our border controls, particularly along the smuggling routes. For this, FRONTEX needs to be armed.