European states should pool their resources to save time and money on increasingly costly procedures for assessing visa applications, the bloc's top justice official will tell interior ministers tomorrow.
All EU states except Britain and Ireland already decide jointly which countries' citizens need a visa to enter the bloc. Britain and Ireland are also outside the Schengen passport-free travel area. The bloc's 10 new, mostly eastern members, have yet to be allowed into the zone but already apply common visa rules.
The European Commission will present a draft regulation urging those 23 states to go further, a spokesman for the EU's executive arm said.
One EU country's consulate could take charge of people who want to travel to other EU states, checking they have the right documents and adding their details and picture to a joint electronic database, spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said.
"It will save human and financial resources," he said.
But Roscam Abbing stressed that each country would continue to take the final decision on whether to grant a visa.
"One state can never take the decision on behalf of another member state, it is legally not possible," he added.
A diplomat from a small EU country welcomed the move.
"We have been talking about this for a long time, but it is the first time that it has become concrete," the diplomat said, adding that it would be useful as the EU planned to create an electronic database with details on all visa applications.
The diplomat said countries would save money if only one consulate in a given location needed a machine to read fingerprints.
Roscam Abbing also said the EU was moving ahead with plans to introduce electronic chips in EU citizens' passports.
He was confident EU countries would meet an August deadline to introduce a chip with the passport holder's picture. He said the EU executive would decide in the coming weeks on adding fingerprints to the chip, a move with which EU states would have three years to comply.
The 15 EU states whose citizens do not need a visa to enter the United States need to have picture-chips in their new passports by Oct. 26 to remain part of a visa-waiver programme.