Romania was the first in Europe in 2017 on counterfeited ID documents, according to data from Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, quoted by Ansa.it. The country is followed by Italy and Greece.

This could change as the European Commission proposed yesterday a set of measures to curb document fraud and “further curtail the space in which terrorists and criminals operate.”

The measures include making biometric data mandatory for those countries with ID cards, as is the case of Romania. The EU citizens' ID cards and non-EU family members' residence cards would include biometric data, namely fingerprints and facial images, stored on a chip in the cards. This will be accompanied with stronger safeguards on who can access the biometrics.

The new rules provide for a relatively quick but gradual phase out of non-compliant cards at their expiry or at the latest within five years and for less secure ones within two years.

The proposed measures do not introduce compulsory ID cards across the EU but upgrade the security features of existing ones, while leaving other aspects related to the design of national ID cards entirely up to individual member states.

An estimated 80 million Europeans currently have non-machine readable ID cards without biometric identifiers, the Commission said.

editor@romania-insider.com