Some countries such as Germany and France have already started issuing them although the deadline for all countries is the end of June. States have until 2012 to implement the rules and current passports will remain valid for travel except to certain countries.
 
“1 person, 1 passport”
 
In a vote earlier this month the Civil Liberties' Committee backed exempting children under 12 from biometric data collection.
 
However, MEPs believe that children with their own passport - biometric or otherwise - are safer from trafficking and abduction if travelling as they can be identified more easily. For this reason the Civil Liberties Committee strongly backed the principle of “1 person, 1 passport”.
 
More secure application procedures for passports
 
The Civil Liberties' Committee would like EU States to start using the same documents (“breeder documents”) when they apply for a passport.
 
Portuguese MEP Carlos Coelho of the centre-right EPP-ED group drafted Parliament's report on the regulation and will open the debate at 15:00 Tuesday 13 January. You can watch the debate live online here. Late last year Mr Coelho negotiated compromises with EU Justice Ministers over changes to the regulation.
 
The vote on the first reading of the amendments to this regulation will take place on Wednesday 14 January in Strasbourg. 
 
The UK is excluded from the Regulation as it is not part of the Schengen zone. However, it has said it will keep in step with regulation to ensure its documents are not perceived as “2nd class”.