Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-01-Speech-3-155"
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"en.20041201.15.3-155"2
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".
Mr Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin by thanking my colleagues in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs for their help, particularly the shadow rapporteurs, among whom I am especially grateful to Mr Cashman. We must all work together to find solutions to the dangerous times in which we live. There is no point in burying our heads in the sand. It is crucial that we strengthen our citizens’ security, and yet we must do this without compromising essential freedoms, including the right to personal data privacy.
The proposal before us today was submitted to Parliament in February 2004 and is the result of a coherent approach towards biometric identifiers involving harmonised solutions on national documents from third countries, on EU citizens’ passports and on the Visa Information System and the second generation of the Schengen Information System. Increased security in travel documents and the integration of biometric identifiers will help in the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration, and will lead to increased security in the exercise of freedom of movement. The best way to prevent the use of false identities is to check whether the person presenting the document is the genuine holder or not. New technology offers many benefits when it comes to identifying individuals and preventing counterfeit documents. We must combat what is known as ‘visa-shopping’
and identity misuse.
Parliament is entirely justified in the importance that it attaches to data protection. A balance must always be struck between the need for security and respect for individual rights and freedoms recognised by national and Community laws. This is an essential and
condition for adopting the use of biometric identifiers.
I therefore fully endorsed the proposed amendments tabled in the letter from the Article 29 Working Party and I emphasise the need for measures relating to access; in other words, who is entitled to access and for what purpose. The Member States must draw up a list of the competent authorities, of guarantees relating to people who cannot provide certain of the selected biometric data, such as fingerprints, as in the case of burn victims or amputees, and of guarantees to the effect that when border checks are carried out and a false rejection occurs, the citizens concerned will be informed of the reasons for such a rejection and of the means to be employed in order to clarify and rectify the situation as quickly as possible. Lastly, new functions must be granted to the supervisory authorities in this area, along with an increase in the resources needed to carry out those new functions.
To conclude, I should like to mention the four questions that are crucial to the adoption of this report. Firstly, there should be one sole objective for the use of data. It must be made clear, with no room for doubt, that data may be used solely for the purpose of identification and under no circumstances for the purposes of covert identification or surveillance.
Secondly, there is the question of the database. The report that I am presenting to you categorically rejects the idea of setting up a centralised database. Biometric data must be stored solely on the passport. It is not necessary to set up a database to ensure a more reliable link between the passport and its holder; the risk of function creep – the use of data for other purposes than originally envisaged – is too great. I wish to state categorically that nowhere in the Commission’s legislative proposal or in the current Council text is there a proposal to set up a database. There was a reference in the explanatory statement to the notion that this may be considered in the future and, for this reason, we suggest that Parliament’s position be made clear straightaway.
Thirdly, the technical solution chosen: the technical specifications should be sound, as it is those specifications that determine whether the biometrics will work or not. We cannot run the risk of rushing into solutions that are later found to be poorly prepared, technically outdated, or too costly. This would damage the citizens’ trust. One key question, Mr Frattini, is that the most delicate part in terms of data protection is not a matter of which principle is chosen, but the way in which it will be implemented. We therefore propose that the experts viewing the technical specifications from a data protection point of view should have the opportunity to evaluate the technical specifications and raise any issues.
The fourth and last point concerns amendments to the initial proposal. At its meeting of 26 October, the Council decided to proceed with the amendment to make fingerprinting compulsory; it had previously been optional. From a political point of view, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs had already adopted, by a large majority, the introduction of both biometric identifiers, with the sole difference that it left the adoption of the second to the Member States’ discretion. All reservations were raised with the Council and it was the Member States themselves who opted to dispense with that discretion and to choose both straightaway.
I therefore feel that there should not be any objections to Parliament voting in favour of this report. In so doing, Parliament will be making its position clear on the issue and underpinning the guarantees that we always want to see safeguarded."@en1
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