Seven months after the Interior Ministry initiated public procurement procedure for selecting a company to produce Bulgarian biometric identification documents came to a halt, the ministry announced that new procedure will be under way in the spring of 2009, Dnevnik daily reported. The implementation of biometric passports was due on January 1 2007 with the country's accession to the European Union.

The implementation of the biometric passports is one of the crucial conditions for the abolition of the US visa requirements.

As to why there was a need for the invoking of a new procedure while the deadline set as a EU requirement was long missed, the ministry has said that all six companies which have applied had administrative and legal errors in their final offers.

In April 2008, former deputy interior minister Goran Yonov said that the printing of the biometric passports will begin in March 2009 at the latest. With the recent developments, the Interior Ministry would not wish to engage in the setting of a new deadline, Dnevnik daily reported.

When the new selecting procedure begins next year, the six previous candidates will be also invited to give it a second try, the ministry said. They included two French companies, Sagem Defence Securite and Gemaldo. The other four short-listed were Siemens Bulgaria, Hungarian Allami Nyomda Nyrt, German Bundesdruckerei Gmbh, and Greece's Printec.

In addition to the passports, the ministry will commission the printing of 14 other documents among which will be Bulgarian "lichna karta" (ID), driver licence and temporary residence permit.

Because of the delay, the European Commission took punitive action against Bulgaria in 2007.