EU passports: the awful truth

Is the European Union going to strip your passport of all symbols of the Crown? The answer is no. Unless of course Gordon Brown insists it is so or if the French were to give up the emblem of their proud republic, the Germans their imperial eagle and everyone else their own fiercely guarded national symbols.

Will the British passport be replaced with EU passports?

It is simply not going to happen. The awful truth about EU passports is much worse. Under the new Lisbon Treaty there are new powers to create truly EU passports and ID cards. These will not be about superficial trappings and trimmings – such as the Crown symbol and all that Lion and Unicorn stuff – but the gritty reality of growing ID surveillance demands from and between states across Europe, and beyond.

The legend of the EU’s evil intent to scrap national passport symbols is a potent one, for all it is complete cobblers. Over on EU Referendum, Richard North unravels and puts into perspective the latest stories about Foreign Office plans (after a non-binding European Commission suggestion) to include in passports a sticker telling Brits they can avail themselves of other EU consulates and embassies in the event of a crisis.

But the behind the scenes – and your passport cover – there is a lot going on with our ID documents. Now fitted with biometrics and microchips, all done to exacting, existing standards set at the EU and Trans-Atlantic level, there is lot, lot more to the modern passport than archaic heraldry or Royal flummery about “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State".

Today’s ID cards and passport have a simple objective, surveillance, one that is shared by all EU member states and, importantly, in these post-9/11 days the United States.

Writing in the newspaper today, Philip Johnston explains what the new ID era is for: “The answer has nothing to do with security, any more than the presence of CCTV cameras everywhere has anything to do with stopping crime, as even senior police officers now concede. It is about political control. The state wants to know where you are, and those who run it have always believed it has a right to know, but have usually been beaten back by Parliament.”

As I have written about here, the EU is now one of the places (conveniently free of scrutiny and accountability) where the latest in biometric controls are being dreamt up. This is with the UK’s enthusiastic support. Britain’s own “e-Borders” is a trailblazer – and there is more to come.

A little known element to the new Lisbon Treaty quietly drops old safeguards that specifically ruled out an EU dimension to ID cards and passports (the two are increasingly interchangeable).

Here is the detail. Part two, article 18 of the Nice Treaty states:
“18, 1) Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect.
“18, 2) If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain this objective and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council may adopt provisions with a view to facilitating the exercise of the rights referred to in paragraph 1.”

After a flaming row in Nice and British insistence, the following caveat was added – much to the chagrin of the Commission and most other countries.

Article 18, 3 declares: "Paragraph 2 shall not apply to provisions on passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document”.

This has now been ditched. In a silent U-turn, British officials let it go. What was a red line for Tony Blair in 2000 was no longer a red line for either Mr Blair or Mr Brown last year.

Article 17, of the Lisbon Treaty states:
“Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties. They shall have, inter alia: the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States... ”

Then tucked in Article 62 is the change.
“If action by the Union should prove necessary to facilitate the exercise of the right referred to in Article 17(2)(a), and if the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers, the Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, may adopt provisions concerning passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document. The Council shall act unanimously after consulting the European Parliament.”

The climb down was for simple reasons. Britain has allowed Article 18,3 to be removed in order to allow the UK to participate in EU borders and security measures, such as biometric passports and ID cards.

Britain fought, and lost a battle, in the European courts last year because it is excluded from existing sharing digital biometric information, such as fingerprints, with the 24 countries that are part of the Schengen system of common EU external border controls.

British law enforcement agencies have lobbied hard to “opt-in” and gain access to EU-wide databases of digital photographs and fingerprint taken from biometric visa applications.

EU plans for future databases holding a fingerprint register of all European passport holders are expected in the next decade and British securocrats, typical of the breed wherever they are from, want in.

I am not especially bothered about the Crown symbol on my passport. To the degree it exercises me at all, I would say it and the Crown prerogatives that go with it (and that are used to neuter opposition to EU Treaties amongst other things) should be removed from a central role in British politics and public life.

I do care about civil liberties. I may not share the same national symbol on my passport as a Frenchman, a German, a Pole, Italian or any other EU citizen but I do share what I believe is a common European interest in freedom. That is the issue with EU passports.