UK EU presidency aims for Europe-wide biometric ID card

UK EU presidency aims for Europe-wide biometric ID card
By John Lettice
Published Wednesday 13th July 2005 11:01 GMT

The UK is using its Presidency of the Council of the European Union to push for the adoption of biometric ID cards and associated standards across the whole of the EU. In a proposal issued on Monday (11th July), the UK calls for the drafting of "common standards for national identity cards taking into account the achievements in relation to the EU passport and in the ICAO framework."

The tiptoeing around ICAO is significant, because the current ICAO standard covers only passports, and effectively only requires a facial biometric. The UK Government's piggybacking fingerprints and ID cards on the back of this is therefore entirely self-inflicted, as is the EU decision to incorporate fingerprints in passports. The UK proposal (which is available at Statewatch) ratchets this up further not by actually saying the whole of Europe has to do biometric ID cards in order to comply with ICAO, but by couching the matter within an ICAO context. It's the UK Government reasoning of 'might as well do it because we're doing the passports already' projected across an entire continent.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/13/uk_eu_id_proposal/