EU: Fingerprinting children - VIS (Visa Information System)
01 January 2008
This document shows the latest position of the Council of the European Union (27 governments): See:
EU doc no: 16598/07 (pdf) There would be limited use of the fingerprints of children aged 6-12:
"Fingerprints given by children aged between 6-12 at the time of collection may only be used for verification purposes"
"Verification" means that only "on-to-one" checks can be carried out to confirm that the child is the same as that recorded in the travel document. But Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Bulgaria and Estonia want childrens' fingerprints to be checked "one-to-many", that is against the whole database.
The European Parliament wants the age from which children can be fingerprinted to be set at 12 years old and more, the EU governments want it to be 6 years old. The standard set for visas is likely also to apply to resident third country nationals and all EU citizens too.