Until recently paper was the main material for identification documents manufacture in Ukraine. The majority of developed countries began to change over to the new generation of documents on the polymeric base as early as in 1990s. With the emergence in Ukraine of ZNAK Ltd., a powerful manufacturing complex issuing plastic cards, our country received the opportunity to produce the documents of new generation of the best world specimen level.
Many analysts believe that soon all identification documents in the world will become plastic. For example, on March 28, 2006 amendments to the Traffic Convention adopted by UN on October 28, 2004, came into power. It is foreseen that unified driving licenses of new type on the polymeric base will be introduced in 60 countries-members of the Convention. As a consequence of the adoption of this document by 2012 Ukraine took on responsibilities to ratify all corresponding agreements.  
The advantages of plastic carriers of data (including personal information) in comparison with paper carriers are obvious:

• plastic is  a more expensive material; it limits the number of those who would like to forge a document
• it ensures a better protection from forgery due to polygraph and physical protection tools
• it has a  longer durability; e.g., the warranty for polycarbonate pages of a new Ukrainian travel passport is not less than 10 years
• there emerges a possibility to use microprocessor technologies. 

Now in Ukraine the plastic is used as a base for the manufacture of different identification documents with anti-counterfeit elements, including the application of holographic security elements manufactured by the Specialized Enterprise HOLOGRAPHY, a member of the EDAPS Consortium):

• polycarbonate pages for travel passports;
• national driving licenses;
• vehicle registration certificates;
• crew member IDs;
• IDs of the staff members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other institutions.