The European Union has already announced that it would eliminate the visa for some Latin American countries; and among them ours, Colombia. Precisely the announcement is accompanied by another, which turns out to be a technological breakthrough and has to do with security: the implementation of biometric passport. In accordance with a letter from the European Union regarding the process of exoneration of the Schengen visa for the countries of Peru and ours. Among the required requirements that have been indicated to our nations is the establishment of secure identification point systems.

Although the mechanical reading passport used by Colombian citizens is in line with the security requirements of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), the current national government is willing to introduce the biometric passport in a short time, which gives us many more benefits of security systems that are aligned with international control agencies.

Differences between mechanical and biometric reading passports

Among the most outstanding features of the mechanical reading passport is that it contains a main page that includes the biographical data of the person, designed in polycarbonate and with a laser print. Although this passport has a reading technique similar to the previous one, which is called mechanical reading; the current uses OCR (optical character recognition) technology through scanners used in migration. It also includes the printing of data in laser and also contains other verification systems, such as watermarks, drawings on pages that react to fluorescent light and security threads.

On the other hand, the biometric passport contains a built-in chip with a storage capacity of 32 kB. In this chip, several biometric data are collected, such as an image of the face and the fingerprint, and it could also contain data such as iris recognition.

From 2025 you can not enter Europe without the Biometric passport

In the document delivered by the European Union indicates that the tender for the biometric passport in our country would have started last year, a situation that has not happened. Similarly, the establishment of the biometric passport of our neighbor Peru, was also a requirement for Peruvians wishing to travel to Europe without requiring a visa, but apparently this country has setbacks for this matter.

The Foreign Ministry of Colombia recently indicated that the European Union also requested this requirement to our country to stop requiring the Schengen visa, but this will be necessary from 2025, ie within a decade. According to the above, passports can be used until that year.