Europese Unie gaat vingerafdrukken bij visumaanvraag verzamelen (en)
The EU on Tuesday (11 October) started collecting fingerprints of visa applicants in north African countries, as part of a new data base connecting all 25 countries that are part of the border-free Schengen zone. The system should be rolled out in all EU consulates around the world by 2014, but is already two years behind schedule.
The Visa Information System (VIS) connects fingerprints to digital pictures and personal information of each applicant for a Schengen visa, so as to avoid fraud. Having a shared data base on visa applications will also allow governments to check if the person is not also applying for visas or has already been denied entry in another Schengen state - something that cannot be verified at the moment.
"From now on, foreigners wishing to visit the EU will benefit from clearer, more precise, transparent and fairer visa application rules. The new system will also allow visas to be issued and verified in a more efficient and secure way," home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement.
Fingerprinting will prevent identity theft or "renting a passport", a practice that according to EU commission sources is quite frequent among Asian visitors. "We have the problem of lookalikes, for instance from Asia. For €2,000, they can rent a passport with a multiple entry visa to the Schengen area, pretend they are that person and once they are here, mail it back to Asia so it can be used again," one EU official told journalists on Tuesday.
The European Commission admits, however, that for the new system to deliver on its advertised goals, some two more years have to pass until the system is rolled out in all the 2,500 Schengen consulates around the world. According to a decision taken by interior ministers in 2009, after the first countries where the new system is being rolled out - Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia - the VIS will then be rolled out in the Gulf region and Asia, but an exact calendar has yet to be established.
This after the France's Steria and the American giant HP which should have created the system by 2009 ran into "technical difficulties" and was fined by the commission €7.5 million for the delay. "But member states too had problems in getting their national systems up and running, so it's not exclusively the fault of the external contractors," an EU source said.
The total cost of the VIS system at a central level - not the national databases paid by local budgets - amounts to €91 million. Maintenance of the main data server in Strasbourg and its backup in the Austrian Alps will cost another €20 million. But with 13 million Schengen visas issued each year at a cost of €16 each, the revenue surpasses largely the cost of this data collection system which has already been put in place in the US, EU officials stress.
Unlike the US, however, VIS is not linked automatically with other data collection programs such as the Schengen Information System listing cross-border crime suspects and stolen goods. Police and intelligence services in Schengen states can access the data only if they have a specific case going on. British, Irish and Cypriot police are excluded, as their countries are not part of the Schengen area. Romanian and Bulgarian authorities have their national systems ready for VIS deployment, once they are accepted as Schengen members.
British Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford, who drafted the European Parliament's position on the VIS system, said the roll-out was good news, "but the two-year delay is dismaying."
A staunch defender of privacy rights, the EU legislature managed to incorporate "strong data safeguards" in the system, given that personal details, including fingerprints of around 70 million visa applicants, will be stored at any one time. "I also insisted that states should be liable for any data protection breaches even if information collection is outsourced to a private contractor,” Ludford added.