process for the card, fingerprint images were neither printed on the card nor stored in an RFID chip embedded within the card. Front side The front side of the previous design (used from 1994 to 2021) featured the words "RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE" across the top and "Carte nationale d'identité/ National Identity Card" as well on cards issues since 2021 on the front, plus the following information: Card number Nationality (French) Photograph of the holder Surname Given name(s) Sex Date of birth (dd.mm.yyyy) Place of birth (If born in France, only the name and number of the département) Height (in metres, on the back of the new cards) Signature of holder At the bottom of the front side (the back on the new design) is a two-line machine readable zone. Machine-readable zone The format of the first row is: The format of the second row is: Rear side The rear side contains the following information: Residential address of the holder Date of expiry (dd.mm.yyyy, on the front of new cards) Date of issue (dd.mm.yy) Issuing authority Signature of the issuing authority Credit card like microchip and datamatrix code on cards issued since 2021 Future changes Following a study launched by French Minister of the Interior Daniel Vaillant in 2001, plans have been proposed to introduce a new identity card, the INES (carte d'identité nationale électronique sécurisée) or 'secure electronic national identity card', to be implemented from around 2007. Similar to a credit card, it is likely that this will contain biometric fingerprint and photograph data on a chip (also recorded on a central database). The scheme has many similarities to the defunct British national identity card and National Identity Register created by the Identity Card Act of 30 March 2006. The official agency in charge of data use monitoring, the 'national commission for computing and liberties' (commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés or CNIL) has no official position since the project hasn't been officially submitted yet. CNIL was itself created (in 1978) to guard against the infringement of liberty that might result from the use of information technology, as a result of the public outcry over other plans in the 1970s to issue a 'national identity number' to each citizen, linked to the records of all Government agencies (which would have been similar to the existing numbers in many other European countries: Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Estonia, etc.). Official consultation