The (adjustments made to the) articles of this Statute Law will become effective on a date determined by royal decree, which can be determined differently for the various articles and sections. Queen Beatrix forwarded the proposal to the Parliaments of Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten on 13 October for consideration.

 

The adjustments regarded extending the validity of travel documents and Dutch identity cards from five to ten years; no longer accepting Dutch identity cards by law as travel document; including in the law a basis to impose rights owing to actions on applying for travel documents and Dutch identity cards by the major of a municipality or the lieutenant governor of a public body, and no longer keeping the fingerprints of those applying for travel documents on file after the issuance or the reason not to issue the travel document is registered in the administration. Furthermore, the regulation of two instead of four fingerprints when applying for other documents and that these will no longer be filed in the travel document administration after issuance.

 

The validity of the passport will be changed from five to ten years. For underage persons up to eighteen years the period of validity will remain five years because these holders of a passport must resemble the picture in the passport.

 

With the decision to extend the validity of the passport a consideration is made on the one hand between the wish to reduce the administrative costs for citizens applying for a passport and on the other hand to reduce the risks arising from extending the validity due to change of resemblance and regarding physical sustainability and physical and electronic security of the document.

 

The cabinet strives to limit the risks for the electronic security. The certified chip, to be used in the documents with ten-year validity, must be made of cryptographic key material that is safe for the intended validity.

 

Experts expect that in the future the number of vulnerabilities in t he chips and the tempo in which they are found will increase. The reason is that security of the chips has become a specialty due to the growing popularity of for example electronic travel documents. These specialists are continuously thinking up new ways to test the security. Vulnerabilities in the chip of a travel document cannot be restored.