European Parliament approves digital registration for MEPs attendance

The European Parliament will replace the manual registration of lawmakers’ attendance with a system based on scanning their badges and, on a voluntary basis, fingerprints, according to document about a bureau meeting on Monday (5 February), seen by Euractiv. 

The bureau is an internal body of the European Parliament dealing with administrative matters.

The current system envisages MEPs registering by means of manually signing in before entering the plenary sessions, committees, or group meetings, as a way to be granted a daily tax-free allowance of €338.

The allowance is paid to MEPs on top of their €120,000 annual salary to cover accommodation and related costs.

The bureau, composed of the 14 vice presidents, the quaestors, and the president of the European Parliament, decided then to partially automate the attendance attestation with badges and introduce a fingerprint scan system on a voluntary basis. 

The matter was already discussed by the Parliament’s administrative body in previous meetings, including last October, when bureau members discussed challenges around the proposal, like the management of sensitive personal data such as fingerprints and the compliance with the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recommendations. 

LEAKS: EU Parliament mulls using MEPs' fingerprints to register attendance

The European Parliament is moving forward with controversial plans to replace the system of manual signature by MEPs with a system of biometric fingerprints as proof of presence at parliamentary meetings, according to a Parliament document seen by Euractiv.

Among its recommendations, the EDPS, which is responsible for ensuring that European institutions respect the right to privacy and data protection when they process personal data, suggested the ‘one to many’ system of data storage, that allows biometric templates to be changed and cancelled in order to reduce the risks of unauthorised access to biometric data. 

The EDPS also pointed to the value of using a ’one-to-one system’ in which no biometric data would be stored on the local database of fingerprint readers.

Before October, the European Parliament consulted its service provider on this point but the company indicated that the use of renewable and cancellable templates would affect the biometric performance and was not supported by their system.

In the final decision, it was established then that fingerprints registration will take place on condition that the voluntary nature is guaranteed, the procedure complies with opinions issued by the EDPS, and the decision will be revised after two years.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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