IDEMIA selected by Danish National Police to deliver new border control solution over the next decade

• IDEMIA has been awarded by Rigspolitiet, the Danish National Police, an initial ten-year contract to plan, develop and maintain a comprehensive border management system for Denmark’s external Schengen borders.
• The new system will address the software and hardware needs of 12,000 Danish officers in border control, immigration and law enforcement.
• The procurement includes options for a full range of equipment including: self-service kiosks, eGates, biometric tablets, portable solutions for border guards, self-adjusting face cameras, passport readers and fingerprint scanners.
• Denmark’s Entry/Exit System will comply with the new European EES (EU-EES) and ETIAS¹ regulations.

Rigspolitiet decided to take the opportunity provided by the introduction of the new EU-EES regulations to completely replace and enhance its current border management solution. The selection of IDEMIA follows a comprehensive, competitive procurement process executed by Rigspolitiet over a one-year period.

By May 2022, the new EES regulation will allow the EU to record each entry, exit and refusal electronically and replace the current use of passport stamping. It will also benefit from the capture and verification of face and fingerprint biometric data of Third Country Nationals (TCNs) at the external borders of the Schengen Area.

About Denmark’s borders

In 2019, approximately 10 million people crossed Denmark’s external Schengen borders, totaling an annual increase of six percent. Approximately 4 million of these visitors were TCNs, traveling primarily via Copenhagen Airport. In recent years, there has been substantial growth in cruise tourism, resulting in an increase of traveler activity at the Port of Copenhagen.

Due to the annual increase in visitors (bar the pandemic), and the changing EU regulations, Rigspolitiet recognized the need to further strengthen and enhance security at its external borders, whilst maintaining an optimized traveler flow.

A comprehensive solution to enhance security in Denmark

In addition to helping secure the Danish borders, the complete suite of solutions will also assist with immigration control, as well as law enforcement searches in both national and international criminal databases.

To successfully provide Rigspolitiet with a comprehensive solution, IDEMIA partnered with two local Danish companies:

• Systematic – supplier of mission critical solutions to the Danish National Police, National Intelligence Agencies and global Defence Forces.
• Biometric Solutions – a proven, nationwide support and maintenance service provider.

IDEMIA has significant expertise in delivering and managing large-scale biometric programs at a national level. For this strategic Danish Government solution, IDEMIA will be deploying Augmented Borders™, a comprehensive border control suite. This suite will include the following biometric solutions:

• A national border management system
• TravelKiosks™: self-service kiosks
• TraveLane™: automated border control eGates
• Mobile biometric tablets
• Portable integrated border control equipment for border guards
• TravelTotem™: self-adjusting face cameras
• MTop™: fingerprint scanners to equip manual counters

The goal is to enhance the efficiency of border guards and speed up the border control process.

IDEMIA is looking forward to this long-term partnership. Through this collaboration, we will be helping Denmark to ensure that it fulfills the requirements of the new EU-EES regulations using biometric capture technology. After Iceland, Denmark is the second European country that has chosen to collaborate with IDEMIA to implement a complete and highly secure solution that optimizes the traveler flow. We thank Rigspolitiet for its trust in IDEMIA, and are proud that our solutions enable countries around the world to strengthen their borders.
Pascal Fallet, IDEMIA Senior Vice President Europe, Public Security & Identity

In April 2020, IDEMIA, in partnership with Sopra Steria, was selected by eu-LISA to roll out the shared Biometric Matching System (“sBMS”). This is the new European automated multi-biometric identification system for foreign nationals, hosted by the eu-LISA agency. sBMS will provide the central biometric capacity for the new EU-EES, as well as other European systems, for the benefit of all Schengen Member States, including the system selected for Denmark.

In October 2020, the consortium formed by IDEMIA and Sopra Steria was chosen by the French Ministry of the Interior to design, build, roll-out and maintain a new standard border control system for their EES.

In December 2020, Iceland’s police selected IDEMIA for their complete EES solution.

IDEMIA has partnered with several EU institutions for many years, and has installed border control systems in 23 countries.

¹ ETIAS will be a largely automated IT system created to identify security, irregular migration or high epidemic risks posed by visa-exempt visitors travelling to the Schengen States, whilst at the same time facilitate crossing borders for the vast majority of travellers who do not pose such risks.