By Sarah Laitner in Brussels and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: March 27 2005 19:09 | Last updated: March 27 2005 19:09

US Congress is likely to come under pressure to extend a deadline for 27 visa-exempt countries to supply biometric passports after it emerged only six European Union countries will be ready to issue the new documents, raising fresh concerns that millions more visitors will need visas.

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Under the new rules, passengers with passports issued after October 26 must have a new high-tech version or apply for a visa, which can take weeks.

The threat of imposing visas on passengers from western Europe and Asia will trouble US industry and in particular the tourism industry which could facemillions of dollars of lost spending.

US companies, universities and tourist groups have already said that tighter border policies are hurting business with visitors sometimes facing lengthy waits for a visa interview.

According to the European Commission only Belgium, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Luxembourg will be in a position to start issuing the biometric passports from October 26.

The UK and France are set to miss the deadline and will lose visa-free access for new passport holders unless Congress acts.

Japan has also indicated it will not be ready with the passports for a year. The biometric passports, which include a digital photograph embedded on a chip, were proposed by the US in a bid to improve border controls in the wake of the September 11 2001 terror attacks.

Several countries have warned of the difficulties they face in producing the high-tech passports in time to meet the October deadline.

Last year they and US authorities urged the Congress to extend the deadline by two years. It eventually agreed to a one-year extension. And there are concerns over how authorities will store the information and the reliability of the technology.

In addition, the international community has not agreed a common standard on security features, with some passports featuring fingerprints. The US will start issuing the new high-tech passports to its citizens this year but full roll-out is unlikely until the end of 2006, according to the State Department.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted it was making “very dramatic progress” on its work with countries developing the documents, which it wants as part of a drive to tighten border security.

The US version of the passports will feature digital images of the face, whereas the EU documents will have a digital image and a fingerprint stored in a chip. They may include iris scans in the future. The US last year began fingerprinting and photographing travellers from the 27 visa-free countries arriving at international airports in exchange for allowing the countries another year to issue the high-tech passports.