TNAG-1094-FCO40-1344-European-Community-common-format-passports-Hong-Kong-and-Dep-1981 — Page 23

ESR 11 (Revised)

DRAFT: minute/texleketter/den patch notex

TYPE: Draft/Final 1+

FROM:

Reference

Secretary of State

DEPARTMENT:

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION

TO:

Prime Minister

Top Secret

Secret

Confidential

Restricted

Unclassified

PRIVACY MARKING

SUBJECT:

PASSPORTS

TEL. NO:

Your Reference

Copies to:

CAVEAT..

..In Confidence

Enclosures-flag(s)..........

1.

You will recall that work is in progress in Brussels

on the implementation of the decision taken at the

European Summit at the end of 1974 that the passports

of EC Member States should have a common format. I

last minuted to you about this on 15 April 1980.

2. Since then, substantial progress has been made in

Brussels and most of the technical difficulties have

been resolved. In particular, it should now be possible to reach agreement that we need not make the change to the European format until we are ready to move to the new ICAO recommended format which permits machine reading.

This means that we could take our own decision on when to

introduce the new passport. The subject will be on the

agenda of the Foreign Affairs Council on 17 March.

3. I have discussed the issues with Willie Whitelaw

and I attach a short paper with which he agrees, which suggests how we might now proceed. The key point in our proposals is that we would not accept any firm date for introduction of the common format passport; its timing would be linked to the timing of the introduction of the new ICAO format and this will depend on the studies now in progress. As I have said, I believe this will be acceptable to other Member States, though they will probably wish to insert a "target" date of 1985 in the

/resolution