eIDAS & Digital Europe: Recommendations to strengthen sovereignty and security

22 Mar 2022 eIDAS & Digital Europe: Recommendations to strengthen sovereignty and security

This year, the Digital Europe programme will fund major projects in the field of digital identity. The programme will give a concrete shape to the legislative proposal establishing a European Digital Identity Framework (eIDAS 2).

The first concrete initiative is a call for proposals the Commission launched on 22 February. This call will fund four large-scale pilots for the deployment of the European Digital Identity Wallets. As part of the call, participants will test the implementation of a framework to exchange identity credentials in several Member States. In short, this call will show how eIDAS 2 could work in the field. A budget of 37 million euros is foreseen.

The second concrete initiative is an upcoming call for tenders to develop a Wallet prototype.

Surely, these two initiatives will significantly impact tomorrow’s identity landscape in Europe. The outcomes of successful pilot projects could feed into the final implementation of the European Digital Identity Wallet and its related ecosystem. Likewise, the Wallet prototype could be used by Member States that do not have an identity solution yet.

In this context, Eurosmart drafted a set of recommendations to use these projects to strengthen Europe’s sovereignty and offer a high level of security. These recommendations include:

• Relying on secure elements and European cybersecurity certification schemes
• Thinking “European” for actors and data
• Leveraging existing standards, such as ISO/IEC 18013-5

Please find below the complete set of recommendations.