The issuance of new generation biometric passports in Armenia will start on November 1, said the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Arpine Sargsyan. According to her, the documents will be equipped with built-in electronic chips, thanks to which foreign border services will be able to automatically and significantly faster receive information about the passport owner.
Sargsyan noted that currently Armenian passports have to be checked manually at the border, by flipping through pages. The new format should significantly speed up the procedure: data will be read electronically, and the probability of errors in identifying the document owner will approach zero. The process itself, according to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will take only a few seconds.
The introduction of biometric passports is associated not only with the modernization of documents, but also with Armenia's international obligations. As Sargsyan emphasized, the transition to new generation passports is one of the important requirements within the framework of the visa liberalization process between Armenia and the European Union.