Third-country nationals who are allowed to enter the Schengen area, including those with a short-stay tourist visa, will soon no longer need to give their passports to border guards to obtain a stamp.
Very soon, all information on entry and exit to the Schengen countries will be automatically registered through a new automated system. It is going to be tested and launched this year. The system is being created to track travelers from third countries who enter the EU and identify individuals who abuse their stay in it.
The entry/exit system will replace the current system of manually stamping passports. “It takes a lot of time, does not provide reliable data on border crossings, and does not allow for the systematic identification of persons who violate the terms of stay in the Schengen,” the EU Commission for Migration and Home Affairs said in a statement.
The innovation will allow travelers to cross borders faster. In doing so, the system will record specific data about travelers, including their name, fingerprints, facial image, type of travel document, date and place of entry, date, and place of departure, as well as the period of their stay in the Schengen area.
In addition to launching the entry/exit system this year, the EU authorities said they also plan to change the visa application process.
The European Union Parliament recently approved the idea of transferring the procedure for applying for a Schengen visa to the online one. The project is also aimed at modernizing the visa itself: traditional stickers in passports will become a thing of the past, and digital visas will replace them.
The European Parliament stressed that as soon as everything is ready, all visa applications will be processed on a single platform, but with an indication of the consulate of which country the documents have been submitted.