Title: DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY

Description of activity

The survey of ID theft legislation started in December 2004, co-ordinated by Tilburg University with the help of the FIDIS network members. Since then, a network of country correspondents has been set up of legal experts who provide information about the legal situation in their country. This network is still evolving, since only a minority of the 25 EU member states are represented in FIDIS. We have so far restricted ourselves to finding contacts in the countries with FIDIS members, and will extend the network with correspondents of the other EU countries in the second Workplan period. 

The activities of the country correspondents, like the basic literature search undertaken by Tilburg University, initially focused on ID theft and ID fraud legislation. Towards the end of the first Workplan period, it gradually became clear that there are few if any specific provisions in criminal law in the EU member states about ID theft or ID fraud. Therefore, it was decided to extend the scope of the survey with a search for traditional criminal-law provisions that may cover various forms of ID fraud. This is an on-going process, since these provisions differ in character and kind from country to country and are spread across the entire field of criminal law. Hence, this deliverable can present only the first, preliminary results of the survey, focusing on ID theft and ID fraud. The work on the survey on criminal provisions that cover ID fraud will continue well into the second Workplan, and an updated version of this deliverable will be presented towards the end of the second Workplan.  

All results of this survey are incorporated in the ID Law Survey that is part of WP8, a prototype of which is available at <http://rechten.uvt.nl/idls/>. We refrain from listing all findings in this document, since it can be better presented in a more structured way in the online website. In the Annex, the current entries on ID theft and ID fraud are listed. In addition, on the website, the first results have already been incorporated of the survey of specific criminal provisions.