Luxembourg will perform four pilot use cases of the EU’s proposed digital wallet spanning public and private sector applications, such as eGov services.
The proposal is led by the EU Commission which delegates use cases to the POTENTIAL Consortium (Pilots for European digital Identity wallet). Luxembourg is a member of the Consortium.
Over 26 months of the running pilot scheme, countries will test the effectiveness if they launched their own digital wallet saving digital credentials onto their mobile device, which could open up easier digital banking services, eGov services, mobile driving licences and legally signed digital documents. While the EU digital identity proposal, eIDAS, may seem imposed on member states, ongoing partnership still needs to establish if tested solutions can be implemented on a large scale for EU-wide citizens, not just individual countries, ensuring technical interoperability and standards at a European level. Doubts over privacy and data ownership have also been entangled in the recent amendments of eIDAS regulations, which were accepted last week.
The Ministry for Digitalisation and the CTIE will participate in testing the national digital wallet against variables like speed and efficiency when verifying and onboarding a citizen to access government services. The merits of having a digital bank account that can be opened securely and seamlessly with a digital identity go far beyond the financial services to enabling unlimited access to everyday services.
Moreover, their pilot will scrutinise the benefit of having electronic driving licences integrated in their digital wallet to present to police forces or recognised by car rental agencies throughout Europe. The integration of a “Qualified eSignature” to sign digital documents that have legal value also serves the EU citizen wherever and however they want to transfer an e-document to a constituent like an employer.
Enabling citizens to sign documents remotely – if interoperability is achieved across Europe – should be recognised by all Member States when the EU digital identity wallet is implemented. The EU Commission’s objective is to evolve these national digital ID apps to integrate eIDAS protocols and standards.
The second revision of the eIDAS regulation aims to provision at least 80% of citizens of European member states with an open, interoperable digital identity solution by 2030.
POTENTIAL, which is fully aligned with eIDAS, call upon 140 public and private members from 19 Member States of the European Union to solve technical, business and regulatory issues around providing a digital identity.
