Brussels (Brussels Morning) – European Council adopts regulation for digital identity framework, ensuring secure and accessible digital identities for all Europeans.
Today, the European Council adopted a new regulation on a European digital identity (eID) framework. It aims To ensure a reliable and protected digital identity for all Europeans. Its goal is to guarantee that people and businesses across Europe have ubiquitous access to secure and trustworthy electronic identification and authentication. Under the latest law, member states will offer residents and businesses digital wallets that can connect their national digital identities with proof of additional personal attributes (e.g. driver’s license, credentials, bank account). Under the new regulations, citizens will be able to confirm their identity and share electronic papers from their digital wallets merely by using their mobile phones.
The new wallets of European digital identity (EDIW) will authorise all citizens to access online services with their nationwide digital identification, which will be identified throughout the EU, without holding to use private identification processes or unnecessarily sharing personal data. “User control ensures that only information that needs to be shared is shared,” the Council further establishes in the statement.
The wallet will include a dashboard of all transactions available to its holder, both online and offline, will present the possibility to register any data protection breaches and will permit interaction between wallets. Furthermore, nationals will be able to combine the wallet with existing national electronic tag systems and profit from free electronic signatures for non-professional use. According to the main elements of the latest law: by 2026 each Member State will keep making a digital identity wallet unrestricted to its citizens and abide by EDIW from other Member States, according to the modified regulation; adequate guarantees have been inserted to bypass discrimination against those who prefer not to use the wallet, which will always remain voluntary; and the allocation, use and cancellation of the wallet will be free for all natural persons.
Furthermore, Member States will be needed to provide free validation mechanisms only to confirm the authenticity and validity of the wallet and the uniqueness of the parties relying on the portfolio; and application software features will be open source, but the Member States will be given space so that, for justified reasons, it is not required to disclose specific components other than those established on users’ devices.
Finally, consistency was provided between the wallet as a form of eID and the system with which it is administered. The revision of the law describes the scope of application of qualified authentication certificate Websites (Qwac), which ensures users the ability to prove who is behind a website while maintaining the industry’s established security rules and measures.
Background
In June 2021, the Commission offered a framework for a European digital uniqueness that would be open to all EU citizens, residents, and businesses, via a European digital identity wallet. The latest framework amends the 2014 law on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS regulation), which applied the bases for safely accessing public services and taking out transactions online and across borders in the EU.
The regulation needs member states to administer a digital wallet under a notified eID scheme, built on common technical means, following compulsory certification. To set up the necessary technological architecture, speed up the implementation of the modified regulation, provide procedures to member states and bypass fragmentation, the proposal was attended by a recommendation for the growth of a Union toolbox defining the technical specifications of the wallet.
