Last week, the European Commissioner for Justice made another request to the US State Department to extend the deadline for replacing old EU passports with new ones containing biometric information about the holder. The US Congress responded with a firm refusal, promising to introduce a visa regime for EU citizens wishing to come to America. According to Gzt.ru, a disgruntled Brussels has prepared a symmetrical response: Americans crossing the borders of the European Union will also be required to present a new passport or an entry visa.
Fingerprints and eyes as a pass
The decision that all citizens of the 25 EU member states would, as before, be able to enter the United States without visas was made in Washington back in October of last year. It was then that the next round of security tightening was discussed as part of the campaign against international terrorism. However, the US State Department stipulated as the sole but mandatory condition for visa-free entry the possession of a new-style passport containing unique biometric data of the holder - fingerprints and an image of the retina structure. If an EU citizen does not have such a passport, they must apply for a visa at the American consulate. Usually, processing of an entry visa application takes from one to three weeks.
The previous regulation on entry rules, which existed until October 2005, stated that the path to the US without a visa was open only to citizens of the 15 main EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom). The new decision opened the visa-free regime to citizens of ten new EU member states (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia). Of course, provided they have a new-style passport.
"A delay is highly undesirable"
The very project of introducing passports with biometric data arose in the US after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. In early 2002, the US State Department notified the European Commission of the new procedure. However, by the time this measure became mandatory, only citizens of Finland, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and Luxembourg had been issued new-style passports. The remaining countries had not managed to produce and replace the documents because of their "complex technological component".
For this reason, the European Commission members in October 2004 sent a request to Washington to extend the deadline for passport replacement to October 26, 2005. The United States met the Europeans halfway and allowed visa-free entry for citizens of the 10 EU countries who had exchanged their documents in 2003 and whose passport data can be read by computer. But the indulgence proved insufficient, and this week the EU again complained that they "cannot meet the deadline". On behalf of the European Commission's Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, a request was sent to the American authorities asking to extend the deadlines for production and replacement of passports to August 28, 2006.
The US Congress's response was sent to Brussels on behalf of the chairman of the parliamentary committee on justice, James Sensenbrenner, and was phrased extremely briefly: "A delay is highly undesirable". This, according to European Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing, "means that EU citizens will have to obtain visas at American consulates".
"We are hurt and upset"
The EU is openly outraged by the US refusal. "We are hurt and upset," members of the European Commission commented on Congress's response in a joint public statement. In response to the Americans' intransigence, official Brussels, represented by Abbing, promised to unleash a "real visa war", with the main actors being staff of representative offices and consulates. Every US citizen entering any of the 25 EU countries will also be required to present at the border a passport with fingerprints and a hologram of the retina structure. If such a document is not available (and the EU is well aware that the passport replacement process in the US has barely begun), the American will be asked for an entry visa. The visa procedure, Brussels vengefully promises, "will take at least one week".