Pre-travel controls: Digitalising travel documents

European Commission presents “travel app” proposal

The European Commission is proposing regulation under its initiative for digitalising travel documents. We are responding to a consultation that is open to the public and highlighting problems with the proposal. In this article we provide background to the initiative and highlight problems that could put fundamental rights at risk, such as a new, secretive biometric surveillance infrastructure to implement to proposed system.

The European Commission (EC) has presented two proposals in the context of their initiative for digitalising travel documents. This initiative includes a “Proposal for a Regulation establishing an application for the electronic submission of travel data (“EU Digital Travel application”) […] as regards the use of digital travel credentials” (2024/0670 (COD)) – henceforth “the proposal” or the “the travel app” and subject of this article and of our consultation feedback – and a “Proposal for a Council Regulation establishing an identity card-based digital travel credential”. A previous public consultation on the goals of this initiative, prior to the presentation of the legislative proposals, received overwhelmingly negative feedback.

The “travel app” could disproportionately impact fundamental rights

It is our view that these proposals may disproportionately impact fundamental rights including to privacy, data protection, non-discrimination and freedom of movement.

This article highlights three aspects of the proposed regulation that could put people at risk:

• creating infrastructure for biometric mass surveillance

• prioritising commercial interests while constructing people as risky

• instituting new and reinforcing existing forms of discrimination

The EDRi network is submitting detailed feedback to the public consultation. There we also address procedural concerns in the context of the EU’s Better Regulation commitment – such as the lack of engagement with fundamental rights risks, and the exclusion of inconvenient stakeholders and perspectives – and a lack of robustness in the underlying efficiency calculations of the regulation.

Read EDRi’s full submission to the European Commission

1. This creates infrastructure for biometric mass surveillance of travel

The proposal would rely on facial image databases to perform biometric identification but does not make it explicit how that is to be created or safeguarded, despite the data protection and cybersecurity risks for passengers. In practice the digitalised check of travel documents would require the processing of biometric data and expose facial images of passengers to member states, but the proposal does not contain any concrete security requirements.

The proposal requires investments in biometric surveillance infrastructure, such as facial recognition cameras at border crossing points, where they support the digitalised travel credentials.

2. This prioritises commercial interests and constructs people as risky

Whilst the proposal is presented as “digitalisation of passports and ID cards” to the public, the proposal is really about digital pre-submission of information from the chip of existing physical passport and ID cards to border authorities. Travellers will still need to carry the physical document. The proposal tries to reduce the time required for security checks that are a result of increasing securitisation and political narratives of protecting Europe’s borders against terrorism and migration. The proposal does not tackle the underlying issue – constructing people as inherently risky that need to be managed and controlled.

Pre-submission of information will include a biometric identification procedure that takes most users multiple minutes. The inherent racial biases of facial recognition technology will inevitably lead to bad user experiences for some persons.

This potentially discriminatory identification procedureis weighed against a promised saving of 20 seconds during the border check procedure. This does primarily benefit commercial airlines and border control authorities processing travellers, but not travellers themselves. This questions the benefit to the right of freedom of movement, that the proposal is proclaimed to achieve. It is also likely to further entrench systems of securitisation and existing discriminations.

3. This creates new forms of discrimination and reinforces existing ones

We are glad that the European Commission’s proposal intends for use of the digital travel app and credentials to be voluntary, after originally also considering a mandatory policy option. But what is not taken into account is the coercive impact of such systems:

The imbalance of power between the traveller and the border authority – and the consequences of seeming ‘suspicious’ or ‘difficult’ so profound in the often discretionary process of immigration – means that the individual has very little power or genuine control. People who are disproportionately constructed as security threats and treated to over-policing will be even less willing to exercise their supposed free choice not to use the new travel app, for fear of being harassed, detained or denied travel.

It is foreseeable that Member States will reduce the resources to run traditional border agent kiosks, and may even make the physical process more cumbersome. This would not only negatively affect people who want to exercise their right not to use the digitalised travel credentials but also third-country nationals when the EU system cannot access their passport chip or the data from the chip cannot be validated by the app.

We ask for traditional border lanes with manual checks and e-gates to remain genuinely viable options. They must be properly resourced to ensure that those choosing these options are not disadvantaged by this choice.

What happens next?

The public consultation on the “travel app” regulation (2024/0670 (COD)) remains open to the public until January 8, 2025. You can participate in the consultation to voice your opinion and share this blog to inform more people about the proposal.