As announced in Official Journal C 71 of 25 March 2009, the Commission decided to withdraw this proposal, which had become obsolete.

The committee adopted the report by Carlos COELHO (EPP-ED, PT) broadly approving the proposal under the consultation procedure, subject to a number of amendments aimed at clarifying the purpose of the amended regulation and upholding citizens' privacy and data protection rights:

- it should be clearly stated in the legal text which authorities will have access to the biometric data in residence permits, namely, the Member State authorities which are competent to read, store, modify and erase data, and authorised bodies entitled to read the data;

- the purpose of including biometric data in the uniform format for residence permits should be made more clear in the legal text: the committee specified that the biometric features should be used only for the purpose of verifying the authenticity of the document and the identity of the holder. No provision should be made for further information to be stored in the resident permit;

- the Member States should regularly forward to the Commission audits of the application of the regulation, in particular regarding the rules limiting the purposes for which data may be used and the bodies which may have access to the data. They should also inform the Commission of any problems encountered in applying the regulation;

- as the technical specifications are of crucial importance for data protection, the committee proposed that experts assessing these specifications from a data-protection viewpoint should be able to take part in the work of the technical committee. And, to ensure democratic accountability, it wanted the European Parliament to be given the possibility of opposing the adoption of the technical specifications.

The Council, pending the opinion of the European Parliament, reached a general approach on the two draft proposals laying down a uniform format for visas and for residence permits for third country nationals. The Council:

§ confirms that the specifications for the enrolment of biometric identifiers in the Visa Information System (VIS) will be coherent and therefore in line with the specifications laid down for biometric data in the Regulation concerning a uniform format for visas;

§ considers in agreement with the Commission that the implementation of the proposal on a uniform format for visas requires an additional legal instrument, creating the obligation and specifying the exceptions to the recording of fingerprints on the storage medium of the uniform format for visas;

§ invites the Commission to present the relevant proposal on the amendment of the Common Consular Instructions;

§ invites the Commission assisted by the Committee created under Article 6 of Regulation 1683/95 laying down a uniform format for visas to start as soon as possible with the development of the technical specifications necessary for the implementation of the measures.

The Council took note of the Commission’s intention to present a proposal for biometric identifiers in passports before the end of the year. It is recalled that the Commission had been requested to prepare these two proposals by the Thessaloniki European Council in June 2003. The main objectives of the proposals are to bring forward the final date for implementation of the photograph from 2007 to 2005 and to require Member States' harmonised integration of biometric identifiers into the visa and the residence permit for third-country nationals in order to ensure interoperability.

In October 2003, the Brussels European Council called upon the JHA Council to reach political agreement by the end of 2003 on the two proposals.