From 1 February all Belgians applying for a passport will be issued with a revamped version. The new passports will contain hi-tech features to help speed up checks at airports and frontier posts.Furthermore, the passports will better ensure the holders' privacy and will be more difficult to copy.
The Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht unveiled the new style passport to the press at a news conference on Tuesday morning. The most remarkable feature of the new passport is a decoding page that enables the identification of falsified photos, thus all but eliminating the problem of so-called "look-alikes". Despite the changes, the price changed for a passport will remain the same.
