A European Union

laissez-passer A travel document is an identity document issued by a government or international entity pursuant to international agreements to enable individuals to clear border control measures. Travel documents usually assure other governments that the beare ...

is a

travel document A travel document is an identity document issued by a government or international entity pursuant to international agreements to enable individuals to clear border control measures. Travel documents usually assure other governments that the beare ...

issued to civil servants and members of the institutions of the European Union. It is proof of privileges and immunities the holders enjoy. The document is valid in all countries of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

as well as in over 100 other countries. In 2006, the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

issued or renewed 2,200 laissez-passer, and other agencies may issue the document as well. The present regulation was proposed by the

implementing machine-readable laissez-passer according to ICAO 9303 standard including a digitized photo of the bearer's face and fingerprints. The number of data fields was reduced and the document no longer contains information on address and physical appearance.

History

Provisions for issuing laissez-passer were already present in the treaties establishing of the European Coal and Steel Community, the

European Atomic Energy Community The European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) is an international organisation established by the Euratom Treaty on 25 March 1957 with the original purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, by developing nucl ...

and the European Economic Community and a single European Community laissez-passer was established at the beginning of the 1970s. As a result of the

Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Communities, ...

, the name was changed to European Union laissez-passer. The initial laissez-passer was available in all four languages of the communities (French, German, Dutch and Italian), but not in English. Subsequent extensions changed the number of languages to the present 24.

Appearance

The document contains 48 pages and all text is in all 24 official languages. A data page has a visual zone and a

machine-readable zone A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s. Mos ...

. The visual zone has a photograph of the holder, data about the passport, and data about the LP holder much similar to a normal passport. The nationality and place of birth of the passport holder is not mentioned in an EULP, but the code EUE is used in fields similar to ''issuing country''. * Photograph * Type f document, which is "PL"* Code f the issuing organization, which is "EUE" for "European Union"* Laissez-passer No. * Surname * Given Name(s) * Official of / Nationality UE / nationality code* Date of Birth * Sex * Date of Issue * Date of Expiry * Signature The first line of a machine-readable zone (which is at the bottom of the page) of the passport contains a letter to denote the type of travel document (which is "PL"), followed by the code normally used for the issuing country (but here: "EUE" for "European Union"), and the name (surname first, then given name or names) of the passport holder. In a similar fashion to most passports, the EU laissez-passer contains a request:

References

External links

;Legislation
Council Regulation (EU) No 1417/2013 of 17 December 2013 laying down the form of the laissez-passer issued by the European Union
*
Consolidated version of regulation (EU) No 1417/2013 containing corrections
(as of 28 December 2013) ;Printer
Laissez-passer.eu
{{European Union topics, state=collapsed European Union International travel documents Travel documents issued by international organizations

History

Appearance

See also

References

External links