Over the past three years, issues concerning the security of electronic identity documents have been addressed by the NewP@ss research project. The research has been conducted by a number of organisations including Infineon Technologies, NXP Semiconductors and Giesecke & Devrient (G&D). It was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with about 4 million euros. The companies were part of a consortium of 15 European enterprises and research institutions within the EUREKA CATRENE programme.According to the partners, the consortium has developed data structures and new security chip architectures that are being integrated into the latest globally applicable standards for travel documents. In addition to the ID holder's biometric data, the newest electronic travel documents can electronically record visa data and arrival and departure stamps. This also makes it possible to update ePassports and similar documents during their relatively long period of validity rather than replacing them, for example, in the case of a name change due to marriage or an address change after a move.Given citizens' increasing mobility and the constant availability of electronic services, the secure use of digital identity documents for smartphones and tablets was also researched. The experts considered open architectures and tested new security mechanisms at both software and hardware levels. The primary focus was placed on contactless communication with an eID Card, secure mobile user authentication and confidential data input and output within a protected computing environment.The NewP@ss research project had a total volume of about 30 million euros, half of which was covered by business and industry partners and the other half by the governments of five EU member states. The German share was about 8.7 million euros.Biometric travel documents are currently issued in all 28 EU states with its approximately 500 million residents. eID cards are used in 23 European countries. Other European states have already announced that they will introduce eID cards in the next few years or begin issuing the next generation, which this research project helped to develop. A total of 120 states have distributed around 500 million electronic travel documents since 2006.

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