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ID Cards - All Bulgarians Need to Travel in EU

Bulgarian citizens will be allowed to travel in EU member states only with their ID cards and in line with the Schengen agreement as of 2007, when the country will join the European block.

This is envisaged by amendments to the law on Bulgarian ID cards that the parliament definitively adopted.

Under the new legislation Bulgarians living abroad, who do not have valid ID cards, will be issued temporary documents, to allow them return to their homeland and travel.

Bulgarian citizens will receive new ID cards and passports with a chip and biometric data when their current documents expire.

Yet Bulgaria's deputy foreign minister Tsonko Kirov recommended that Bulgarian citizens have with them their international passports as well when travelling to avoid technical snags during the first days after accession.

Citizens from EU member states, participants in the European Economic Area (EEA), the Swiss and their families will be issued cards for a temporary or permanent stay in Bulgaria, only if they stay for at least three months.

The Interior Ministry will issue cards for a period no longer than five years. The cards for a permanent stay will be valid for ten years.

The European Commission has decided that all EU member states should introduce into newly-issued passports digital facial images and fingerprints. Member states will have to implement fingerprints at the latest on 28 June 2009.


EU Introduces Single Driving Licence

The European Parliament definitively approved a plan to replace the 110 existing types of driving licences with a single document to be valid across the bloc.

The first new driving licences are to be issued in 2012, to be introduced the following year. They will look like a credit card with a photo and a microchip.

The old types of driving licence are to be recognized not after 2032.

The current types of driving licences are now held by almost 200 million people - which range in shape, size, the length of time they are granted for and the ease with which they can be counterfeited.

"It took a very long time to bring about the European driving license," said Belgian centre-right MEP Mathieu Grosch, as cited by EUobserver. He said he hoped "existing driving licenses will be replaced a lot sooner than the maximum transition of twenty years."

Grosch explained that Germany, Austria and many of the new member states had been against a shorter transition period.

"The Germans are proud of their little grey paper driving license," he explained to journalists in Strasbourg. "For them it's like giving up your soul."

He added many of the new member states had been reluctant about the new EU licence because they had just recently spent the time and money on new licencees.

The new license will contain anti-falsification measures but it has been left up to member states to decide whether to insert a microchip containing the holder's driving record.

It will be valid for ten years only, with member states having the option of extending it up to 15 years. Licences for trucks and buses will only have a five-year shelf-life. The time limits were introduced to cut down on fraud.

It is also left up to member states whether they want to introduce regular medical tests for elderly drivers.