Passports of the EFTA member states are passports issued by the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. EFTA is in this article used as a common name for these countries.
EFTA as an organisation does issue rules for passport design and validity of the four countries, but the European Union does this through the Schengen regulations, besides the global ICAO regulations. The EFTA member states are bound by the Schengen regulations as they are part of the Schengen Area.
Use Passports issued by the EFTA member states can be used by citizens to exercise the right of free movement within EFTA and the European Economic Area (EEA), which consists of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in addition to the member states of the European Union.
Instead of being part of the EEA, Switzerland has a series of bilateral agreements with the EU. The European Single Market consequently has been extended, with exceptions, to all EFTA member states. The EFTA member states are also signatories of the Schengen Agreement and part of the Schengen Area. Citizens of the EFTA member states generally have the same rights as EU citizens in EEA countries and are treated as EU citizens for the purposes of travel and entry into EEA countries.
When going through border controls to enter an EFTA or EEA member state, EFTA and EU/EEA citizens possessing valid biometric passports are sometimes able to use automated gates instead of immigration counters, whilst all other citizens (such as those using a national identity card or a non-biometric passport) and non-EEA citizens must use an immigration counter. Anyone travelling with children must also use an immigration counter.
Characteristics Passport standards are issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which are treated as recommendations to national governments. All EFTA member states except Liechtenstein are ICAO members, but Liechtenstein has delegated Switzerland to implement the treaty to make it applicable in the territory of Liechtenstein. The Minister of Switzerland made the following statement in the note transmitting the Swiss Instrument of Ratification: "My Government has instructed me to notify you that the authorities in Switzerland have agreed with the authorities in the Principality of Liechtenstein that this Convention will be applicable to the territory of the Principality as well as to that of the Swiss Confederation, as long as the Treaty of 29 March 1923 integrating the whole territory of Liechtenstein with the Swiss customs territory will remain in force".
ICAO has published standards for machine-readable passports contained in Document 9303 Machine Readable Travel Documents and a more recent standard covering biometric passports. All EFTA countries issues biometric passports.
The size of passport booklets shall be , as specified in ISO/IEC 7810 ID-3 standard. The data page follows a standardized layout, divided into seven zones which contain mandatory elements in a standard sequence. Zones I to VI forms the Visual Inspection Zone (VIZ), and Zone VII is the Machine Readable Zone (MRZ). All fields for mandatory data elements in the VIZ shall have captions which may be in the official language of the issuing State. If that language is not English, French or Spanish, it shall be followed by an oblique character (/) and the equivalent of the caption in English, French or Spanish. If the official language is English, French or Spanish is shall be followed by one of the other two languages. Latin-alphabet characters (i.e. A to Z) and Arabic numerals (i.e. 1234567890) shall be used in the VIZ with diacritics permitted.
Schengen member states shall issue passports and travel documents that comply with minimum security standards. This is according to Council Regulation (EC) 2252/2004 and 444/2009 which the EFTA countries are bound by, as it constitutes a development of provisions of the Schengen acquis within the meaning of the Agreement concluded by the Council of the European Union and Iceland and Norway, the agreement concluded by the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation, and the Protocol signed between the European Union, the European Community, the Swiss Confederation and the Principality of Liechtenstein on the accession of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and the Swiss Confederation, concerning the association of the four States with the implementation, application and development of the Schengen acquis.
Passports and travel documents issued by Member States shall comply with the minimum security standards set out in the Annex of the regulation. Passports must incorporate a storage medium (a chip) that contains the holder's facial image and fingerprints. This obligation does not apply to identity cards or to temporary passports and travel documents with a validity of one year or less.
In addition to harmonization of security features and biometrics, member states of the European Union have started to harmonise aspects of the designs of their ordinary passports. Most passports issued by EU member states have the common recommended lay out; burgundy in colour with the words “European Union” followed by the name(s) of the country, the emblem of the state and the word "Passport".
Of the EFTA member states, only Iceland and Liechtenstein follows the same order as on EU passports, but with a blue cover. Swiss and Norwegian passports have a brighter red cover. The Swiss passport with the word "Swiss passports" in German, French, Italian, Romansh and English above the Swiss equilateral white cross, and the Norwegian passport sports the coat of arms of Norway emblazoned in the top left of the front cover, above the words "Kingdom of Norway" and "Passport" in Bokmål, Nynorsk, Sami and English.
Machine-readable zone
Passports and travel document shall contain a machine-readable biographical data page, which shall comply with Part 1 (machine-readable passports) of ICAO Document 9303 and the way they are issued shall comply with the specifications for machine-readable passports set out therein. Newer EFTA passports contain a Machine-readable zone, which contains the name, nationality and most other information from the identification page. It is designed in a way so that computers can fairly easily read the information, although it still human readable, since it contains only letters (A–Z), digits and "<" as space character, but no bar graph or similar. Apostrophes and similar have to be omitted, but hyphens and spaces should be replaced by an angle bracket. Diacritical marks are not permitted in the MRZ. Even though they may be useful to distinguish names, the use of diacritical marks in the MRZ could confuse machine-reading equipment.
Personal name spelling differences
Names containing non-English letters are usually spelled in the correct way in the visual (non-machine-readable) zone of the passport, but are mapped into A-Z according to the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in the machine-readable zone.
The following mapping is specified for languages of the EFTA countries: å → AA or A, æ → AE, ä → AE or A, ð → D, ø → OE, ö → OE or O, ß → SS, þ → TH and ü → UE. Letters with accents are otherwise replaced by simple letters (François becomes FRANCOIS etc.).
For example, the Norwegian names Sætre becomes SAETRE, Møller becomes MOELLER, and Nygård becomes NYGAARD (or NYGARD). The ICAO mapping is mostly used for computer-generated and internationally used documents such as air tickets, but sometimes (like in US visas) also simple letters are used (MOLLER, NYGARD).
The three possible spelling variants of the same name (e.g. Nygård / Nygaard / Nygard) in different documents sometimes lead to confusion, and the use of two different spellings within the same document (like in the Norwegian passports) may give people who are unfamiliar with the foreign orthography the impression that the document is a forgery.
It is recommended to use the spelling used in the machine-readable passport zone for visas, airline tickets, etc., and to refer to that zone if being questioned. The same thing applies if the name is too long to fit in the airline's ticket system, otherwise problems can arise. (The machine-readable has room for 39 letters for the name while the visual zone can contain as many as will fit)
Iceland Icelandic passports are blue, with the Icelandic coat of arms emblazoned in the centre of the front cover. The words "ÍSLAND" (Icelandic), "ICELAND" (English) and "ISLANDE" (French) are inscribed above the coat of arms and the words "VEGABRÉF" (Icelandic), "PASSPORT" (English) and "PASSEPORT" (French) are inscribed below the coat of arms. Icelandic passports have the standard biometric symbol at the bottom.
Vegabréf literally means "road letter" and is a word used in Scandinavia in historic centuries meaning internal passport.
Identity Information Page
The Icelandic passport includes the following data: Photo of Passport Holder Type (PA) Code (ISL) Passport No. Surname Given Names Nationality Height Date of Birth Personal code number Sex Place of Birth Date of Issue Date of Expiry Authority The information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone.
Liechtenstein Liechtenstein passports are blue with the coat of arms of Liechtenstein emblazoned in the centre. The words "FÜRSTENTUM LIECHTENSTEIN" are inscribed above the coat of arms, with "REISEPASS" and the international biometric passport symbol below.
The information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone.
Norway Current regular Norwegian passports are red in colour, with the coat of arms of Norway emblazoned in the top left of the front cover. The words "Kongeriket Norge", "Kongeriket Noreg", "Norgga gonagasriika" and "Kingdom of Norway" ("Kingdom of Norway" in Bokmål and Nynorsk (the two forms of Norwegian), Sámi and English respectively) are inscribed in the bottom left corner and the word "Pass", "Pássa" and "Passport" emblazoned below the name of the country. In the bottom right corner is the standard biometric symbol.
Identity information page
The Norwegian passport includes the following data: Photo of passport holder Type (a two-letter code beginning with "P") Code of Issuing State (NOR) Passport No. Surname Given Names Nationality (NORSK/ NORWEGIAN) Date of birth Date of issue Date of expiry Issuing authority (The police district) Sex Height Place of birth (Three letter country code, NOR for those born in Norway) CAN (six digit number)
The holder's signature and Personal No. was included on the information page on the previous passport version but was moved in the current version. The information page ends with the machine-readable zone starting with "P<NOR", the previous version started with "PxNOR, where x indicated the type of passport. For example, ordinary passports contained "PVNOR", where the "V" presumably means "vanlig" ("ordinary" in Norwegian.)
Switzerland
Swiss passports are red in colour, with the words Schweizer Pass (German), Passeport suisse (French), Passaporto svizzero (Italian), and Passaport svizzer (Romansh) in the top left corner, with the Swiss equilateral white cross to the right. The standard biometric symbol is placed on the bottom left hand side, with Swiss passport (English) next to it. The font and icons are in white.
Identity information page
A Swiss passport includes the following data on the full plastic information page (left) Photo of the passport bearer Type of Passport (PA - without biometrics, PM - with biometrics, PD - temporary passport, PB - diplomatic passport) Code (CHE) Passport No. 1 Surname 2 Given Name(s) 3 Nationality 4 Date of Birth (dd.mm.yyyy) 5 Sex (M/F) 6 Height in (cm)