Finland ePassport roll out plans announced

31 March 2006

Finland’s Ministry of the Interior has said that its citizens will be able to apply for new biometric passports from August this year.

The booklet will be manufactured in the Netherlands and personalised in Finland. According to SDW estimates, the annual volume of passports issued is in the region of 400,000.

The chip will be stored in a polycarbonate data page, which will hold facial information of the bearer. These digitised facial images will be collected at police stations across the country.

Currently the Finnish passport is valid for a period of one or ten years. However, the country’s Parliament is considering a bill that would make the biometric passport valid for five years only.

The contract has been awarded to a 50-50 joint venture between Suomen PA Segenmark Oy and Sdu Identification BV. It was announced within the last few weeks that the new company – SDU Segenmark Oy – had fought off a challenge to produce the country’s passports, which had been mounted by the country’s current passport producer Setec. Setec already produces ePassports for Sweden and Norway.