EU Citizens Will Have Digital Identity Wallet by 2026

A new EU regulation requires all member states to provide their citizens and residents with at least one digital identity wallet by 2026, which will be used for electronic signatures and document storage.

The EU enacted updated regulations for the European Digital Identity (EUDI), a bill aimed at creating a single digital identification system for citizens and residents of EU member states that was proposed in 2014 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union in 2023.

According to the updated requirements, by 2026, all EU member states must provide their citizens and residents with at least one mobile wallet app for digital identification. This wallet should allow users to confirm their identity in European public and private online services. In addition, the app’s functionality should provide users with the ability to securely store digital documents and exchange and authenticate them with an electronic signature or stamp.

Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for Internal Market, said that all EU governments should pay enough attention to the tool’s structure for digitally identifying citizens. The official believes that only innovative technologies will create transparent and secure solutions that can guarantee personal data protection.

The European Commission also released specifications and recommendations to create a digital identity wallet. Essentially, these are a set of technical tools that should underpin developments. Based on these specifications, four pilot projects were rolled out in 2023, for which the European Commission allocated €46 million of funding. The pilots involve 360 private companies and public bodies from 26 EU member states, Norway, Iceland, and Ukraine.

Among them are:

1. POTENTIAL. An initiative to create digital identifiers for six use cases, including public services, banking, telecommunications, driver’s licenses, electronic signatures, and healthcare.
2. EU Digital Wallet Consortium (EWC). An initiative to develop a wallet application to use it for digital travel credentials.
3. Digital Credentials for Europe (DC4EU). The project is building a trans-European interoperable digital infrastructure for digital identity, private and public sector education, and social protection interoperability.
4. NOBID Consortium. An initiative in which a group of Nordic countries, together with Italy and Germany, are testing a digital identity wallet for retail payments for goods and services.

The pilot projects will last until 2025. The results of each project will be used to further improve the European Commission’s recommendations.

The governments of many countries are interested in developing digital identity identifiers. Citizens of Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, and South Korea are already testing and actively using government ID systems.

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