It addresses the need to limit the risk of passport fraud or falsification by making it possible to use the document in question to identify as veraciously as possible the document holder.

2.4 The ruling of the Versailles Administrative Court of Appeal refers to articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter "European Convention on Human Rights") and to article 18 of the Covenant and points out that those provisions "themselves stipulate that the freedoms they guarantee may be subject to limitations, in particular in the interest of public safety and the protection of public order; that the provisions of article 5 of the decree of 26 February 2001 [...], aimed at limiting the risk of fraud or falsification of driver's licences, by making it possible for the document in question to identify the document holder as veraciously as possible, are neither inappropriate nor disproportionate in relation to the objective at hand; that the fact that the use of photographs showing people with their heads covered has been tolerated in the past does not constitute an obstacle to the decision to end such tolerance owing to the increase in the number of falsifications detected; that the specific violation of the requirements and rituals of the Sikh religion invoked is not disproportionate to the objective in question, in particular taking into account the limited nature of the obligation to remove a head dress to produce a bareheaded photograph; that the requirement does not involve treatment that is different for Sikh persons than it would be for other applicants, and that consequently the contention that the decree of 26 February 2001 is illegal should be dismissed".