Ambassador-at-Large Iztok Mirošič attended the 2019 edition of Rome’s Festival della Diplomazia, where he participated at the session on migrations, visas and new technologies.
There, he presented the dilemmas connected to collecting large amounts of data, inter-operability of European databases, protection of privacy as well as efficiency of data processing at national and EU level with regard to the digitization and of biometric I.D.’s.
In his intervention, Ambassador Mirošič also touched upon the effects of above issues on contemporary migration trends, economy and tourism flows. All of these challenges present themselves as one of the major challenges of the new European Commission, the Schengen Travel Area and the Member States, as they require a strong and common political will to implement. The use of artificial intelligence, face recognition technologies and block chain technologies will fundamentally transform global migrations, and they already do. The private sector is developing independent technological platforms for the management of legal migration and refugees, of which the countries will be an integral part. All of the above, in relation to cyber security, also raises a number of important questions about the need to create a common or uniform EU migration and visa policy.
In his conclusion, he presented Slovenia’s own “app” for digital assistance to its citizens in travel and natural disasters related challenges.