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I live in Belgium where we already have eID and SSO apps that work okish. But I fail to see the need for an EU wide ID. I don't think most EU citizens use servi

by ipatec 5y ago

I live in Belgium where we already have eID and SSO apps that work okish. But I fail to see the need for an EU wide ID. I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than the one they live in. Not services where they need to ID themselves. How much of the population would be in the category needing something like this? I'd say this should be left to the national Governments.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Eid is handled by an formal contractor and it's kinda ridiculous ( + Java based). We are currently checking options to circumvent that. Itsme is really expensive to use ( private for profit company that is being pushed) Okish is the right word ;), but progress is on the way.
scrollaway 5y ago
The EU wants it to be as smooth and painless as possible to go from one EU country to another. If you see it under that lens, this moves makes a lot of sense. Such a service would be useful for me for example: a french living in Belgium with relatives in Greece.
- admissionsguy 5y ago
  Absolutely, right now it's often incredibly difficult to establish residence in another EU country. If you move to Sweden, for example, it can take over half a year [1] before you can access government services, banking, healthcare, or even much of online shopping. [1] https://www.thelocal.se/20210510/my-first-visit-to-the-swedish-tax-office-whats-the-fuss-about-personnummer/ https://www.thelocal.se/20210510/my-first-visit-to-the-swedi...
  - photonios 5y ago
    Really? I moved from the Netherlands to Romania a few years ago and all I had to do was register for residency at the immigration services. That took about 15 minutes. I opened a bank account the same day. Healthcare was also easy once I was employed.
    - dariosalvi78 5y ago
      You can survive, but most online services depend on the availability of a fiscal number, which sometimes takes ages to come especially if you are not employed. Once you're in the system everything becomes smoother. An EU-wide system would be absolutely great for those coming to live here from other EU countries.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    I'm Swedish living in Sweden, but lived most of my life in the US. I too had many issues with this sort of thing. Frankly it's a national embarrassment. At the very least I think that Skatteverket shouldn't be allowed to assess any taxes from someone that hasn't been assigned a personnummer. Not even retroactively. Maybe then they'll have at least a little incentive to do their job. But really this just makes me sad that cash is going away. It provided some ways to work around the system, but with so few people accepting it, you're just kind of the mercy of the bureaucracy. And good luck ever convincing common Swedes it's an issue when they've always lived in the system. They only see it as something that works so well, when it is basically broken for all newcomers.
elric 5y ago
eID and okish in the same sentence? Yikes. It's a terrible experience for me. It doesn't work well on non-Windows operating systems. It doesn't work at all on many operating systems. Which is silly, because it's just a smart card which should work everywhere, but somehow that isn't the case. The "itsme" SSO app is even worse. You can't use it without using an iOS or Android smartphone (and even then it probably won't work if it's rooted). And it's got this really weird requirements of being secured by a 5-digit pin (no more, no less last I checked..).
- ipatec 5y ago
  that's why I said "okish". I think "itsme" works fine for most people. But yes, the system is far from perfect. However, do you have trust that the EU Commission will design something better?
- CyberThijs 5y ago
  Using the PKCS11 certificates on a Belgian eID is cumbersome because the whole 'client certificate' workflow has always been a pain in the butt UX-wise. Many workarounds have been implemented to improve on this, making it less platform-independent than theoretically possible. The itsme app works totally fine for me, and my less tech-literate family members. It strikes a good balance in UX and security. All in all, I think that the Belgian government is doing a good job in this. It needs to work well for the average user, which it does! I don't expect my government to spend time and money to support all fringe cases like smartphones that don't run iOS or Android.
  - elric 5y ago
    > I don't expect my government to spend time and money to support all fringe cases like smartphones that don't run iOS or Android. I expect my government to create solutions that work for everyone. Including "fringe cases". Including people in poverty. The marginalised. The contrarians. The smartphoneless. Everyone. Edit: and I especially expect them not to further the de-facto duopoly of Google & Apple.
    - 5y ago
kuschku 5y ago
Having a unified way to e.g. verify the age of someone without getting their personal data would simplify some services (e.g. youtube) which currently require payment information or a photo of a physical ID and 3 days. The german eID (and bank cards) already contain a way to sign whether or not the holder of the card is >16 or >18 without revealing anything else (e.g. for cash-payment at cigarette dispenser machines) Similar functionality being available in a unified way across the whole bloc is something few other countries have done yet and would drive innovation
- ipatec 5y ago
  Why would you need an unified solution? Why not leave it to the national governments and Youtube or whomever can personalise their checks based on your location.
  - gostsamo 5y ago
    Because it will work for everybody everywhere the same way, which is part of creating a common market, instead of common mess.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    Implementing a functionality for e.g. the danish national ID with a few million users, or Luxembourg, or Austria, isn't worth it. So you'd have support for France, Germany, maybe Netherlands, and that's it. With an EU-wide ID, the smaller countries profit significantly, and startups can integrate and use the functionality easier.
  - cygx 5y ago
    > Why would you need an unified solution? To facilitate freedom of movement within the bloc.
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    The underlying standards are already international. And their production is spanned across the world.
  - 5y ago
Jiocus 5y ago
For someone who makes use of the free movement within the EU for, jobs and residence, having a common system would be very useful. Currently, moving to another member state would require multiple steps to getting access to eID services in that country. Such as requesting (and pay for) a conventional national ID, in order to set up an eID that can be used for banking and identification in that country alone. I'll add that my experience is based on moving within EU in the Nordics, which historically promote seamless free movement between those countries that often exceed the goals set by the EU.
- ipatec 5y ago
  We're far from that. The gap between countries is big. Just to mention Belgium's example despite having an eID, you can't even change your address online in most communes and you need to physically present yourself and demand the address to be changed. About half of the EU countries don't have eIDs. Also we're talking of less than 5% of EU population (some figures I've seen are close to 3%) working in a different EU country than their own. do we really need to implement such a system that comes with major risks? given that it benefits such a small percentage of people?
  - rpastuszak 5y ago
    I agree, but you have to start somewhere though. As much as fixing the issue you mentioned would make eIDs more useful, having eIDs in the first place would give us more reasons to tackle this and similar problems.
    - bbarnett 5y ago
      Why do you have to start somewhere? Why is it a requirement to have eID? Because we can is not a reason. This is the same reason we have global warming. We can build gas burning cars, so we should, without thinking of the consequences. Of what use is eID, when no one can secure anything network connected? When all eID will be subverted, stolen, misused, making the same useless? And meanwhile, causing endless misery for those experiencing the loss of privacy, the consequences of identity theft, abuse by foreign powers, and more. On top of this, I absolutely don't need it easier for a state to track me. Now every time I show my eID, the state gets pinged to validate it? No thanks!
Haemm0r 5y ago
Same for Austria: It is called "Bürgerkarte" and is a requirement for some government services, e.g. accessing health records and medication online, electronic signing of petitions,...) Currently there is a mobile app and the possibity to use the smart card with a reader. [1] According to [2] the Austria eID is already valid EU-wide. [1] https://www.buergerkarte.at/en/ https://www.buergerkarte.at/en/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signatu...
kome 5y ago
"I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than their own." yes, but it's so common to expatriate nowadays, also for short periods. so it would be nice to have a digital ID thing to deal with different administrative stuff, in different countries...
- ipatec 5y ago
  only 17/448 (~4%) million EU citizens work in other country than their birth one. expatriating is not as common as you'd think living in a major EU city.
  - rpadovani 5y ago
    13M work, 17.9M live. [0] However, ~1M goes back every year, so the affected people are more than the ones _currently_ living abroad. Moreover, there are services that also intra-EU tourists can benefit from: - buying products >18 y.o. at automatic machines - simplifying buying drugs at pharmacies (we have EHIC, but it doesn't cover not-urgent care) - having fast track at airports without having an EU passport (in many countries people have an ID but not a passport) - easier lookup for police during random checks [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=8369 https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pub...
  - kalleboo 5y ago
    If you reduce that fraction it's close to 1/25. I know more than 25 people, and indeed I know several EU citizens who work in a different EU country.
  - izacus 5y ago
    Did you really just use the word "only" in relation to 17 million people? Are issues 17 million persons somehow beneath your notice just because they're a smaller part of some arbitrary selected whole?
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    4% of the population is a massive amount of people
piokoch 5y ago
When I rent a car I hate that some random person takes my id and xero copy it, then puts that copy on a pile of papers. I would prefer if it worked the way "my id" works in Poland. When someone wants to confirm my identity, I am getting redirected to a "my id" provider (typically a bank I have account in), I log in, I see what data are required (for instance my age) by the data requestor and I am done. Everything is recorder who was checking which data, when and why. If there is some leak, it is easy to find who should be blamed. I am not a big fan of EU in its present shape, but if EU would make all countries to agree for some sane standard of identification in a secure, privacy preserving way, it would be definitely beneficial.
- dvdkon 5y ago
  Ideally those requests would also include a "deleted after" date. If such a thing was implemented and trustworthy (kind of hard, admittedly), it would make me a fan of an EU-wide eID.
  - mhitza 5y ago
    That would make definite sense and should be straightforward. Instead of sharing your data, you would generate a certificate with an expiration period with which they can access your personal data stored in the system. Ideally this would be short lived and require periodic regeneration.
michieldotv 5y ago
As a Belgian having worked in Denmark, my access to Danish e-government services through NemID was revoked pretty soon after I left the country. This was quite a frustrating experience. Some time after leaving the country I got e-mails saying that SKAT, the local tax authority, had documents/messages for me to read on the secure message platform eBoks. However, try as I might, I was unable to convince anyone to restore access since I was no longer a resident. I agonized quite a bit over this since I dreaded inadvertently being a fraud. It would have saved me a lot of grief if the Danish e-gov services would have federated with Belgian and other EU identity services. Edit: Forgot to say this is something The Netherlands already does pretty well. Dutch e-gov services, or at least those from Belastingdienst federate with many European idenity service providers including Belgium. Great for cross border workers.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  The various authentication services are already supposed to integrate through EIDAS but I don't know how well that works yet. I'm seeing the button to use it on more and more government login pages so I think it's getting picked up more. As far as I know, the Dutch government has been pretty slow in their EIDAS implementation, even (nearly?) missing some deadlines, maybe the Belgian government has a similar problem?
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    In Belgium, we have several different regions ( Flemish, Brussels and Wallonia) For some integrations with Wallonia, we are currently forced to use the federal integration, since their implementation hasn't even started yet :( You are correct about eidas, it seems to be handled by the federal government currently, but there's not much documentation on it ( Belgium) and i have seen some applications integrating that way. So i suppose the issue is documentation and discoverability. And the partial conflict of interest with itsme
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      Belgium with its four governments is quite a weird edge case on many aspects of international standardisation. I don't don't much about the Belgian systems other than that there are several, but theoretical Belgium could make four systems work separately to authenticate abroad with the right federal setup. Like is the case with my own government, I don't have very great expectations of Belgium's federal government and their IT projects. I'd wish countries could just share their implementations with other governments. Hell, I believe any code developed with public money should be open source for the benefit of everyone, but governments aren't a fan of that because companies charge more for developing software in the open.
JI00912 5y ago
They're trying to create a single country out of the EU and this is a step in that direction.
- ipatec 5y ago
  do people want that? whenever there was a referendum on an EU constitution or anything of that sort, it got rejected.
  - Closi 5y ago
    The EU as a broader organisation wants that, and over time there has been a transfer of power from member countries to Brussels.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    The Lisbon Treaty was, in practice, a repackaging of the earlier "EU Constitution". In general, people seem fine with the EU behaving more like a single country, as long as it doesn't _represent_ itself that way. Most people, say, don't have a problem with the Working Time Directive (which is quite a country-ish thing to do; there are actual countries with less unified employment rules than the EU) but would be a lot less comfortable with cosmetic stuff (like calling the Lisbon Treaty a constitution, even though it clearly is one).
  - toyg 5y ago
    Referenda are routinely misrepresented in propaganda during debates, and often become proxies for unrelated issues and malcontents (brexit, anyone?). In practice, when you discuss actual issues, pro-Union sentiment is more widespread than reported, and most people agree that "it makes sense" to travel in the direction of closer integration. Even the issues where we kinda "agreed to disagree", like on electric plugs, there is constant moaning as soon as one moves across borders.
    - JI00912 5y ago
      Are you sure? Because I seem to be bombarded with pro EU propaganda from every angle I can think of. None of it ever has any sources of course.
genericacct 5y ago
The need is pretty clear in these covid times: do you want 27 different green/vaccine certificates? They would be super easy to fake.
- ipatec 5y ago
  It will be super easy to fake regardless. Based on how I've seen their system just a scan from the screen of another friend will do the job. There is no biometric crosscheck and I think we should never get to that. We don't need such complicated solutions with massive privacy risks for relatively small problems.
izacus 5y ago
> I live in Belgium where we already have eID and SSO apps that work okish. But I fail to see the need for an EU wide ID. I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than the one they live in. Not services where they need to ID themselves. How much of the population would be in the category needing something like this? Is there reason why this isn't used because noone needs it or because it's too inconvenient to use because we don't have such a system? EU also didn't do a lot of commerce cross-borders until Schengen, Euro and other agreements made such commerce significantly easier and more viable.
dividedbyzero 5y ago
This could be a fantastic thing unless the EU apparatus manages to botch this, if only because some governments otherwise wouldn't make any progress in this regard in the foreseeable future, and that's painful not just for highly mobile people, but for local residents as well. I'd wager a guess that this is largely aimed at countries like Germany, large parts of which still rely 100% on lots and lots of paper-pushing for everything, and where, especially for non-citizens in rural areas, even the most basic services can be a tremendous hassle.
throwaway473825 5y ago
> I'd say this should be left to the national Governments. As a Swede, I strongly disagree with this idea. My country is essentially a "democratic oligarchy" with a wealth inequality similar only to Russia.[1] The current eID system in Sweden is a private oligopoly run by, amongst others, the Wallenberg family and a previous prime minister. This oligopoly is used to stifle competition.[2] Since the politicians are so deeply involved in the banking sector,[3] the only real hope of change is that a higher power takes more control. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/747a76dd-f018-4d0d-a9f3-4069bf2f5a93 https://www.ft.com/content/747a76dd-f018-4d0d-a9f3-4069bf2f5... [2] https://www.realtid.se/konkurrens-storbankerna-har-nekat-fintech-bolag-oppna-foretagskonton https://www.realtid.se/konkurrens-storbankerna-har-nekat-fin... [3] https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/toppsossarna-som-tjanar-miljoner-pa-storbankerna/ https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/toppsossarna-som-tjanar-...
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>the only real hope of change is that a higher power takes more control. A more durable solution would be to move. If sovereignty is ceded to that higher power, and that higher power subsequently becomes corrupt, your range of options significantly narrow.
  - evanb 5y ago
    It'd be much easier to move if their ID and all of their documents were available to other governments in an easy-to-use compatible way. If only there were some sort of bloc-wide digital wallet...
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    Name a country where political leadership isn't intertwined tightly with banking and finance. Somalia maybe? But i doubt it.
- LunaSea 5y ago
  The higher power you are talking about is even more of an oligopoly with only the Commission having any decision power.
fy20 5y ago
I live in Lithuania and they have an electronic ID system which is shared with Estonia and Latvia. You need to use it to access most government websites and utility services, so it's pretty much mandatory unless you want to go to an office and do things in person. You can sign up directly through the service if you are a permanent resident of either of those countries. Although I was an EU citizen, I was not a citizen of these countries, so to be able to sign up I had to open a bank account - which I don't use, as I already have one in my home country. Opening a bank account was also harder than it should be, if you are a permanent resident you can do it online, but as I was a temporary resident - even though I had a Lithuanian issued ID card and personal code - I had to go to a bank to do it in person. So is such a system really needed? Not really, but there are many arbitrary barriers in place that make freedom of movement harder than it should be. Systems like this should make it fair, and stop countries from discriminating (purposely or not) against citizens of other EU countries.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dariosalvi78 5y ago
I have lived and worked in 4 European countries and there are always things that you need fix even years after, for example for taxes or pensions. I currently need to maintain digital IDs for Italy, Spain, the UK and Sweden, plus different implementations of those depending on banks/services. Add the complexity of phone numbers that are no longer valid and / or services that do not allow foreign numbers / addresses (more than you think, especially with companies). I would LOVE to have one single ID system to rule them all (supposing it's VERY secure).
arc-in-space 5y ago
This argument seems exactly backwards to me. If working abroad or using foreign services is difficult due to bureaucratic incompatibilities, then of course less people will do it. Anecdotally, I've certainly used foreign services where I had to ID myself and happily welcome any change that makes movement easier. There will always be irreconcilable language differences and people do have a preference for staying in their birthplace, but that is no reason to not improve things. I'm more worried about the EU actually implementing this well, but time will tell.
robert_foss 5y ago
With free mobility, having a eID/wallet that covers all of the EU makes sense. Being a Swede who now lives in Germany, I can tell you that the lack of system level integration or even compatibility is a real hassle.
nick2k3 5y ago
As an italian recently relocated to Belgium, I really wished I could use my italian eID for some very basic stuff like checking your covid-test result (you cannot access it if you don't have a GP, and you cannot have a GP if you don't have a national number, and you don't have a national number if you don't first register at the city hall) or interacting with institutions. The procedure to obtain a eID is solid enough that the states should really leverage all the work done by another state to verify who you are etc, and allow you to interact with institution in a safe way. IMHO it is one of the best things which could really define us as Europeans.

by ipatec 5y ago

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Eid is handled by an formal contractor and it's kinda ridiculous ( + Java based). We are currently checking options to circumvent that. Itsme is really expensive to use ( private for profit company that is being pushed) Okish is the right word ;), but progress is on the way.

scrollaway 5y ago

The EU wants it to be as smooth and painless as possible to go from one EU country to another. If you see it under that lens, this moves makes a lot of sense. Such a service would be useful for me for example: a french living in Belgium with relatives in Greece.

admissionsguy 5y ago
Absolutely, right now it's often incredibly difficult to establish residence in another EU country. If you move to Sweden, for example, it can take over half a year [1] before you can access government services, banking, healthcare, or even much of online shopping. [1] https://www.thelocal.se/20210510/my-first-visit-to-the-swedish-tax-office-whats-the-fuss-about-personnummer/ https://www.thelocal.se/20210510/my-first-visit-to-the-swedi...
- photonios 5y ago
  Really? I moved from the Netherlands to Romania a few years ago and all I had to do was register for residency at the immigration services. That took about 15 minutes. I opened a bank account the same day. Healthcare was also easy once I was employed.
  - dariosalvi78 5y ago
    You can survive, but most online services depend on the availability of a fiscal number, which sometimes takes ages to come especially if you are not employed. Once you're in the system everything becomes smoother. An EU-wide system would be absolutely great for those coming to live here from other EU countries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  I'm Swedish living in Sweden, but lived most of my life in the US. I too had many issues with this sort of thing. Frankly it's a national embarrassment. At the very least I think that Skatteverket shouldn't be allowed to assess any taxes from someone that hasn't been assigned a personnummer. Not even retroactively. Maybe then they'll have at least a little incentive to do their job. But really this just makes me sad that cash is going away. It provided some ways to work around the system, but with so few people accepting it, you're just kind of the mercy of the bureaucracy. And good luck ever convincing common Swedes it's an issue when they've always lived in the system. They only see it as something that works so well, when it is basically broken for all newcomers.

elric 5y ago

eID and okish in the same sentence? Yikes. It's a terrible experience for me. It doesn't work well on non-Windows operating systems. It doesn't work at all on many operating systems. Which is silly, because it's just a smart card which should work everywhere, but somehow that isn't the case. The "itsme" SSO app is even worse. You can't use it without using an iOS or Android smartphone (and even then it probably won't work if it's rooted). And it's got this really weird requirements of being secured by a 5-digit pin (no more, no less last I checked..).

ipatec 5y ago
that's why I said "okish". I think "itsme" works fine for most people. But yes, the system is far from perfect. However, do you have trust that the EU Commission will design something better?
CyberThijs 5y ago
Using the PKCS11 certificates on a Belgian eID is cumbersome because the whole 'client certificate' workflow has always been a pain in the butt UX-wise. Many workarounds have been implemented to improve on this, making it less platform-independent than theoretically possible. The itsme app works totally fine for me, and my less tech-literate family members. It strikes a good balance in UX and security. All in all, I think that the Belgian government is doing a good job in this. It needs to work well for the average user, which it does! I don't expect my government to spend time and money to support all fringe cases like smartphones that don't run iOS or Android.
- elric 5y ago
  > I don't expect my government to spend time and money to support all fringe cases like smartphones that don't run iOS or Android. I expect my government to create solutions that work for everyone. Including "fringe cases". Including people in poverty. The marginalised. The contrarians. The smartphoneless. Everyone. Edit: and I especially expect them not to further the de-facto duopoly of Google & Apple.
  - 5y ago

kuschku 5y ago

Having a unified way to e.g. verify the age of someone without getting their personal data would simplify some services (e.g. youtube) which currently require payment information or a photo of a physical ID and 3 days. The german eID (and bank cards) already contain a way to sign whether or not the holder of the card is >16 or >18 without revealing anything else (e.g. for cash-payment at cigarette dispenser machines) Similar functionality being available in a unified way across the whole bloc is something few other countries have done yet and would drive innovation

ipatec 5y ago
Why would you need an unified solution? Why not leave it to the national governments and Youtube or whomever can personalise their checks based on your location.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  Because it will work for everybody everywhere the same way, which is part of creating a common market, instead of common mess.
- kuschku 5y ago
  Implementing a functionality for e.g. the danish national ID with a few million users, or Luxembourg, or Austria, isn't worth it. So you'd have support for France, Germany, maybe Netherlands, and that's it. With an EU-wide ID, the smaller countries profit significantly, and startups can integrate and use the functionality easier.
- cygx 5y ago
  > Why would you need an unified solution? To facilitate freedom of movement within the bloc.
- sam_lowry_ 5y ago
  The underlying standards are already international. And their production is spanned across the world.
- 5y ago

Jiocus 5y ago

For someone who makes use of the free movement within the EU for, jobs and residence, having a common system would be very useful. Currently, moving to another member state would require multiple steps to getting access to eID services in that country. Such as requesting (and pay for) a conventional national ID, in order to set up an eID that can be used for banking and identification in that country alone. I'll add that my experience is based on moving within EU in the Nordics, which historically promote seamless free movement between those countries that often exceed the goals set by the EU.

ipatec 5y ago
We're far from that. The gap between countries is big. Just to mention Belgium's example despite having an eID, you can't even change your address online in most communes and you need to physically present yourself and demand the address to be changed. About half of the EU countries don't have eIDs. Also we're talking of less than 5% of EU population (some figures I've seen are close to 3%) working in a different EU country than their own. do we really need to implement such a system that comes with major risks? given that it benefits such a small percentage of people?
- rpastuszak 5y ago
  I agree, but you have to start somewhere though. As much as fixing the issue you mentioned would make eIDs more useful, having eIDs in the first place would give us more reasons to tackle this and similar problems.
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    Why do you have to start somewhere? Why is it a requirement to have eID? Because we can is not a reason. This is the same reason we have global warming. We can build gas burning cars, so we should, without thinking of the consequences. Of what use is eID, when no one can secure anything network connected? When all eID will be subverted, stolen, misused, making the same useless? And meanwhile, causing endless misery for those experiencing the loss of privacy, the consequences of identity theft, abuse by foreign powers, and more. On top of this, I absolutely don't need it easier for a state to track me. Now every time I show my eID, the state gets pinged to validate it? No thanks!

Haemm0r 5y ago

Same for Austria: It is called "Bürgerkarte" and is a requirement for some government services, e.g. accessing health records and medication online, electronic signing of petitions,...) Currently there is a mobile app and the possibity to use the smart card with a reader. [1] According to [2] the Austria eID is already valid EU-wide. [1] https://www.buergerkarte.at/en/ https://www.buergerkarte.at/en/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signatu...

kome 5y ago

"I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than their own." yes, but it's so common to expatriate nowadays, also for short periods. so it would be nice to have a digital ID thing to deal with different administrative stuff, in different countries...

ipatec 5y ago
only 17/448 (~4%) million EU citizens work in other country than their birth one. expatriating is not as common as you'd think living in a major EU city.
- rpadovani 5y ago
  13M work, 17.9M live. [0] However, ~1M goes back every year, so the affected people are more than the ones _currently_ living abroad. Moreover, there are services that also intra-EU tourists can benefit from: - buying products >18 y.o. at automatic machines - simplifying buying drugs at pharmacies (we have EHIC, but it doesn't cover not-urgent care) - having fast track at airports without having an EU passport (in many countries people have an ID but not a passport) - easier lookup for police during random checks [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=8369 https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pub...
- kalleboo 5y ago
  If you reduce that fraction it's close to 1/25. I know more than 25 people, and indeed I know several EU citizens who work in a different EU country.
- izacus 5y ago
  Did you really just use the word "only" in relation to 17 million people? Are issues 17 million persons somehow beneath your notice just because they're a smaller part of some arbitrary selected whole?
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  4% of the population is a massive amount of people

piokoch 5y ago

When I rent a car I hate that some random person takes my id and xero copy it, then puts that copy on a pile of papers. I would prefer if it worked the way "my id" works in Poland. When someone wants to confirm my identity, I am getting redirected to a "my id" provider (typically a bank I have account in), I log in, I see what data are required (for instance my age) by the data requestor and I am done. Everything is recorder who was checking which data, when and why. If there is some leak, it is easy to find who should be blamed. I am not a big fan of EU in its present shape, but if EU would make all countries to agree for some sane standard of identification in a secure, privacy preserving way, it would be definitely beneficial.

dvdkon 5y ago
Ideally those requests would also include a "deleted after" date. If such a thing was implemented and trustworthy (kind of hard, admittedly), it would make me a fan of an EU-wide eID.
- mhitza 5y ago
  That would make definite sense and should be straightforward. Instead of sharing your data, you would generate a certificate with an expiration period with which they can access your personal data stored in the system. Ideally this would be short lived and require periodic regeneration.

michieldotv 5y ago

As a Belgian having worked in Denmark, my access to Danish e-government services through NemID was revoked pretty soon after I left the country. This was quite a frustrating experience. Some time after leaving the country I got e-mails saying that SKAT, the local tax authority, had documents/messages for me to read on the secure message platform eBoks. However, try as I might, I was unable to convince anyone to restore access since I was no longer a resident. I agonized quite a bit over this since I dreaded inadvertently being a fraud. It would have saved me a lot of grief if the Danish e-gov services would have federated with Belgian and other EU identity services. Edit: Forgot to say this is something The Netherlands already does pretty well. Dutch e-gov services, or at least those from Belastingdienst federate with many European idenity service providers including Belgium. Great for cross border workers.

jeroenhd 5y ago
The various authentication services are already supposed to integrate through EIDAS but I don't know how well that works yet. I'm seeing the button to use it on more and more government login pages so I think it's getting picked up more. As far as I know, the Dutch government has been pretty slow in their EIDAS implementation, even (nearly?) missing some deadlines, maybe the Belgian government has a similar problem?
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  In Belgium, we have several different regions ( Flemish, Brussels and Wallonia) For some integrations with Wallonia, we are currently forced to use the federal integration, since their implementation hasn't even started yet :( You are correct about eidas, it seems to be handled by the federal government currently, but there's not much documentation on it ( Belgium) and i have seen some applications integrating that way. So i suppose the issue is documentation and discoverability. And the partial conflict of interest with itsme
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Belgium with its four governments is quite a weird edge case on many aspects of international standardisation. I don't don't much about the Belgian systems other than that there are several, but theoretical Belgium could make four systems work separately to authenticate abroad with the right federal setup. Like is the case with my own government, I don't have very great expectations of Belgium's federal government and their IT projects. I'd wish countries could just share their implementations with other governments. Hell, I believe any code developed with public money should be open source for the benefit of everyone, but governments aren't a fan of that because companies charge more for developing software in the open.

JI00912 5y ago

They're trying to create a single country out of the EU and this is a step in that direction.

ipatec 5y ago
do people want that? whenever there was a referendum on an EU constitution or anything of that sort, it got rejected.
- Closi 5y ago
  The EU as a broader organisation wants that, and over time there has been a transfer of power from member countries to Brussels.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  The Lisbon Treaty was, in practice, a repackaging of the earlier "EU Constitution". In general, people seem fine with the EU behaving more like a single country, as long as it doesn't _represent_ itself that way. Most people, say, don't have a problem with the Working Time Directive (which is quite a country-ish thing to do; there are actual countries with less unified employment rules than the EU) but would be a lot less comfortable with cosmetic stuff (like calling the Lisbon Treaty a constitution, even though it clearly is one).
- toyg 5y ago
  Referenda are routinely misrepresented in propaganda during debates, and often become proxies for unrelated issues and malcontents (brexit, anyone?). In practice, when you discuss actual issues, pro-Union sentiment is more widespread than reported, and most people agree that "it makes sense" to travel in the direction of closer integration. Even the issues where we kinda "agreed to disagree", like on electric plugs, there is constant moaning as soon as one moves across borders.
  - JI00912 5y ago
    Are you sure? Because I seem to be bombarded with pro EU propaganda from every angle I can think of. None of it ever has any sources of course.

genericacct 5y ago

The need is pretty clear in these covid times: do you want 27 different green/vaccine certificates? They would be super easy to fake.

ipatec 5y ago
It will be super easy to fake regardless. Based on how I've seen their system just a scan from the screen of another friend will do the job. There is no biometric crosscheck and I think we should never get to that. We don't need such complicated solutions with massive privacy risks for relatively small problems.

izacus 5y ago

> I live in Belgium where we already have eID and SSO apps that work okish. But I fail to see the need for an EU wide ID. I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than the one they live in. Not services where they need to ID themselves. How much of the population would be in the category needing something like this? Is there reason why this isn't used because noone needs it or because it's too inconvenient to use because we don't have such a system? EU also didn't do a lot of commerce cross-borders until Schengen, Euro and other agreements made such commerce significantly easier and more viable.

dividedbyzero 5y ago

This could be a fantastic thing unless the EU apparatus manages to botch this, if only because some governments otherwise wouldn't make any progress in this regard in the foreseeable future, and that's painful not just for highly mobile people, but for local residents as well. I'd wager a guess that this is largely aimed at countries like Germany, large parts of which still rely 100% on lots and lots of paper-pushing for everything, and where, especially for non-citizens in rural areas, even the most basic services can be a tremendous hassle.

throwaway473825 5y ago

> I'd say this should be left to the national Governments. As a Swede, I strongly disagree with this idea. My country is essentially a "democratic oligarchy" with a wealth inequality similar only to Russia.[1] The current eID system in Sweden is a private oligopoly run by, amongst others, the Wallenberg family and a previous prime minister. This oligopoly is used to stifle competition.[2] Since the politicians are so deeply involved in the banking sector,[3] the only real hope of change is that a higher power takes more control. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/747a76dd-f018-4d0d-a9f3-4069bf2f5a93 https://www.ft.com/content/747a76dd-f018-4d0d-a9f3-4069bf2f5... [2] https://www.realtid.se/konkurrens-storbankerna-har-nekat-fintech-bolag-oppna-foretagskonton https://www.realtid.se/konkurrens-storbankerna-har-nekat-fin... [3] https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/toppsossarna-som-tjanar-miljoner-pa-storbankerna/ https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/toppsossarna-som-tjanar-...

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>the only real hope of change is that a higher power takes more control. A more durable solution would be to move. If sovereignty is ceded to that higher power, and that higher power subsequently becomes corrupt, your range of options significantly narrow.
- evanb 5y ago
  It'd be much easier to move if their ID and all of their documents were available to other governments in an easy-to-use compatible way. If only there were some sort of bloc-wide digital wallet...
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  Name a country where political leadership isn't intertwined tightly with banking and finance. Somalia maybe? But i doubt it.
LunaSea 5y ago
The higher power you are talking about is even more of an oligopoly with only the Commission having any decision power.

fy20 5y ago

I live in Lithuania and they have an electronic ID system which is shared with Estonia and Latvia. You need to use it to access most government websites and utility services, so it's pretty much mandatory unless you want to go to an office and do things in person. You can sign up directly through the service if you are a permanent resident of either of those countries. Although I was an EU citizen, I was not a citizen of these countries, so to be able to sign up I had to open a bank account - which I don't use, as I already have one in my home country. Opening a bank account was also harder than it should be, if you are a permanent resident you can do it online, but as I was a temporary resident - even though I had a Lithuanian issued ID card and personal code - I had to go to a bank to do it in person. So is such a system really needed? Not really, but there are many arbitrary barriers in place that make freedom of movement harder than it should be. Systems like this should make it fair, and stop countries from discriminating (purposely or not) against citizens of other EU countries.

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dariosalvi78 5y ago

I have lived and worked in 4 European countries and there are always things that you need fix even years after, for example for taxes or pensions. I currently need to maintain digital IDs for Italy, Spain, the UK and Sweden, plus different implementations of those depending on banks/services. Add the complexity of phone numbers that are no longer valid and / or services that do not allow foreign numbers / addresses (more than you think, especially with companies). I would LOVE to have one single ID system to rule them all (supposing it's VERY secure).

arc-in-space 5y ago

This argument seems exactly backwards to me. If working abroad or using foreign services is difficult due to bureaucratic incompatibilities, then of course less people will do it. Anecdotally, I've certainly used foreign services where I had to ID myself and happily welcome any change that makes movement easier. There will always be irreconcilable language differences and people do have a preference for staying in their birthplace, but that is no reason to not improve things. I'm more worried about the EU actually implementing this well, but time will tell.

robert_foss 5y ago

With free mobility, having a eID/wallet that covers all of the EU makes sense. Being a Swede who now lives in Germany, I can tell you that the lack of system level integration or even compatibility is a real hassle.

nick2k3 5y ago

As an italian recently relocated to Belgium, I really wished I could use my italian eID for some very basic stuff like checking your covid-test result (you cannot access it if you don't have a GP, and you cannot have a GP if you don't have a national number, and you don't have a national number if you don't first register at the city hall) or interacting with institutions. The procedure to obtain a eID is solid enough that the states should really leverage all the work done by another state to verify who you are etc, and allow you to interact with institution in a safe way. IMHO it is one of the best things which could really define us as Europeans.