Visas to include fingerprints

Press release 260/2011
10 October 2011

Finland, as other Schengen countries, will begin to collect the fingerprints of customers applying for a visa in North Africa as from Tuesday, 11 October. Fingerprints are thereafter collected from visa applicants at the Embassy of Finland in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

The collection of fingerprint identifiers is associated with the introduction of VIS, the Visa Information System. VIS is a European system of visa information that in future will include the visa application data of all Schengen visa applicants and the fingerprints of visa applicants older than 12 years of age.

The system is being implemented in stages geographically, starting from the diplomatic missions of the 25 Schengen countries located in North Africa. Implementation will be continued in the coming months to encompass the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region. The system will be in use worldwide at the latest in the autumn of 2014.

The aim of introducing the VIS system is to improve internal security in the EU and to prevent illegal immigration more effectively. At the same time, it will facilitate border crossing and support development of the common Schengen visa policy. VIS data can later be used to prevent and investigate terrorist offences and other serious crimes.

Implementation of the VIS system and the storing of fingerprints and visa data in the VIS database are based on EU Regulations. The EU took the decision to establish the scheme in 2004. The European Union’s Commission Implementing Decision determining the date from which the Visa Information System (VIS) is to start operations was published on 27 September 2011.

Additional information: Deputy Director Vesa Häkkinen, mobile tel. +358 40 726 1379 and VIS team leader Minna Niemi, tel. +358 9 160 55232, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Unit for Passports and Visas