The Smart Borders Project
The Agency has played an important role in the work undertaken to date related to the Smart Borders package, in particular executing the testing phase of the Proof of Concept. Operational tests were run at 18 different border crossing points in 12 European countries from March to September 2015 in order to assess the feasibility of using some technologies and technological approaches for European border checks and generally to support the decision making process going forward. More than 58000 volunteering third country nationals participated in the pilot, providing crucial qualitative and quantitative information on the quality of data, particularly biometric data, that could be enrolled at the border, the durations of various proposed processes and traveller and border guard perspectives on the tests. The outcomes provide increased confidence that the proposed processes are operationally and technically feasible and respect fundamental rights.
