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News article4 October 2017

Security of Electronic Travel Documents

Conference
© Copy rigths: EU

Machine readable travel documents issued by various Member states to citizens (like ID cards, passports or European driving licenses) must protect the authenticity, originality, and confidentiality of the data stored on the radio frequency chip embedded in the travel document (MRTD chip).

While the implementation of Passive Authentication is mandatory, Active Authentication, Chip Authentication and Chip Access Control are optional. These documents must be also properly readable at the border control check points.

On the 25th and 26th of September 2017 the European Commission hold a conformity and interoperability tests for eMRTDs.

The tests were aimed to verify the latest access control specifications (e.g. the operation of the PACE protocol with Chip Authentication) and gathered EU Member States, non-EU Member States as well as industry representatives. The tests were carried on 40 sample documents and 20 reading devices, including mobile readers for the first time.

The test results showed a big improvement in the conformity of documents compared to the last test event in 2014, organised by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

This time only 0.86% of the tests failed. Regarding the interoperability, the performance with different document readers also highly improved, when comparing current the results with those from 2014.

However, several improvements are still possible and the technical group, lead by the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME) with support of the JRC and other partners, will continue its work on developing guidelines for inspection systems. The detailed results of individual document performance will be still analysed and provided to the individual participants for their information.

The meeting also provided an opportunity to look at latest developments of the ICAO Traveller Identification Strategy, the EU eIDAS programme, the Action plan on document security and the new visa sticker and residence permit for third country nationals.

Legal bases

13/12/2004 - Council Regulation (EC) No 2252/2004 of 13 December 2004 on standards for security features and biometrics in passports and travel documents issued by Member States

18/04/2008 - Council Regulation (EC) No 380/2008 of 18 April 2008 amending Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002 laying down a uniform format for residence permits for third-country nationals

Action plan to strengthen the European response to travel document fraud, COM (2016) 790 Final

Details

Publication date
4 October 2017