Plans for tougher controls on immigration into the European Union were announced today - including a satellite surveillance system monitoring the Union's entire territory and "electronic travel authorisation" for everyone moving around Europe.
The proposals are designed to reinforce controls and counter fears about security following last December's extension of the EU's internal passport-free "Schengen" area to nine of the newer member states in central Europe.
And EU Commissioner Franco Frattini said it was up to the UK and Ireland - not Schengen members and currently retaining their own border control arrangements - to decide whether to join in. He said the satellite surveillance system would require cooperation with the EU's neighbours to the east and south and could not operate without agreements beyond the EU, in the southern Mediterranean and in Africa.
"We have to have cooperation" he admitted. Today's sweeping plans also involve automated electronic "entry-exit" checking systems, particularly for those flying into the EU and landing at in any of the 24 EU countries in the Schengen system.
The system would be so sophisticated that an alarm set off my traveller information monitored electronically at one border entry point would trigger simultaneous alarms in every other EU country involved in the system.
Mr Frattini pointed out that Heathrow was already one of four European airports experimenting with an "electronic travel authorisation" system.
"I have registered my iris at Heathrow and it is important to make the system being used in Heathrow interoperable with the system in Frankfurt and Amsterdam and Paris. So this proposal is open to interconnection," he said.
"It is up to the UK and Irish Governments to decide whether to join a system of entry and exit registers, which are a very useful instrument to prevent over-stayers (immigrants remaining in the EU after expiry of visas).
"The problem of overstayers is a common issue, for the UK and Ireland as well as for the Netherlands or Belgium."