Belgian Biodev-II installation by Zetes

Zetes has announced that is has installed an operational installation at the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa, as part of the European BioDev-II visa pilot project.

BioDev-II is an experiment being run by seven EU Member States from the Schengen area, plus the UK. It is being conducted under the supervision of the European Commission, with Civipol Conseil in France as financial agent.

The primary objective of the experiment is to develop biometric registration solutions that are custom-tailored for each of the eight EU Member States, integrate them into the existing national visa processing systems and test their interoperability. The study is running in each of the countries for a period of 15 months.

After a strict selection procedure by the European BioDev-II consortium, Zetes was added in June 2007 to the shortlist of suppliers. Now, just 3 months later, Zetes has already installed the first operational installations in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Kigali.

Didier Verwaerde, project manager for BioDev-II said: "We can determine with 100% certainty that the person who files a visa application for the EU in Kinshasa is also really the person who will soon be admitted into the EU.”

The eight countries that are taking part in the BioDev II initiative are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

The company to have secured the most countries is Motorola, which has won Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the UK. Meanwhile, Sagem won the French project.

Each country is approaching BioDev II in a different way. One country that is particularly interesting is Spain, where it is considering running the trial at 10-15 consular posts, and including seaports and portable readers.