CONFIDENTIAL personal information about British citizens could be shared with governments and police across Europe under proposals put forward by Brussels yesterday.

In a strategy paper to combat terrorism and serious crime that is likely to be strongly opposed by civil liberties groups, the European Commission challenged governments to set up pan-European databases to collect and share information.

It suggested the creation of a pan-European fingerprint database, a European DNA database, and registers of all EU citizens and of all EU travel documents, to which law enforcement agencies would be given access. If implemented, it would mean that police forces across Europe could access every UK citizen’s fingerprints, which are expected to be recorded for ID cards.

The Commission said that it was essential to set up a pan-European “automated fingerprint identification system”, which would avoid a situation in which a criminal leaves fingerprints at a crime scene in one country, and then flees over the border where police pick him up for something else but have no idea that he is wanted.

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