The process of introducing third generation of biometric passports was the most important project of the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange of Bosnia and Herzegovina (IDDEEA) in 2014, and this new generation of passports has been applied in Bosnia and Herzegovina since October 1st.
Public Relations Advisor of IDDEEA Amila Opardija told this to the Fena agency, adding that these are Supplemental Access Control (SAC) passports that enable safer method of entering data, greater protection of data on the chip and the information page.
She explained that these passports, compared to the previous generation, have a polycarbonate page with data, and the personal data, a smaller photo and less machine-readable area are laser engraved in one of the layers of the polycarbonate page.
Also, Opardija pointed out, the photo of the passport holder is protected from all kinds of abuse (printed in color and is located in the second layer of the polycarbonate page).
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is the first country outside the European Union and among the first in the world to implement this type of passport. In this way, were have also met the commitments made in the negotiations for visa liberalization,” stressed Opardija.
This obligation was met two months before the deadline that the European Union set for its members, so that the European Commission, at its last monitoring for the visa-free regime, which was held in early November, noted that BiH had made remarkable progress in the field of identification documents, especially in the part relating to compliance with the standards related to the third generation of passports.
Since the beginning of issuing biometric passports, IDDEEA has printed 2.2 million passports, and as for the third generation of biometric passports (SAC passports), since the beginning of issuing, 55,983 third generation biometric passports have been personalized, of which 55,893 civic passports, 45 official and 45 diplomatic biometric passports of the new generation.
(Source: ekapija)
