EUDI Wallet and EU Business Wallet as Tools for Enhancing the European Digital Single Market – WS 01 2026

I think it works online also. So thank you for joining the session. Just as an introduction to the session, as we all know, during decades, Europe has removed barriers for people, goods, services, payments, communications. And for the last 20 years, at least for 20 years, Europe also has its own internet namespace, .eu. Well, its trust and identity still remains fragmented. So the questions we will discuss today is could digital identity become the next layer enabling the digital single market? So to discuss this, I have a few questions. I have a talented speaker with me. Norbert, sorry, my pronunciation of your name, so if I mispronounce your name, please correct me. Norbert Sagstetter so you are Head of Unit for Digital Identity and Trust at the European Commission.

You are responsible of the European Digital Identity Framework. We also have Jaromir Jaramir Talir, at CZNIC, the CZ registry. You are responsible for the evolution of the Digital Identity Project. You are representing Czech Republic in EIDAS Technical Service Group for EIDAS Node Infrastructure, and you are managing CZNIC EUDI Wallet large -scale pilot participation. We also have Pedro Oliveira. Pedro Oliveira you are Business Europe Director for Legal Afir since 2018. And if I’m not mistaken, you work with Business Europe since 2009. You have been leading several areas such as customer affairs, access to justice, company law, and corporate governance. And I think you have also contributed to several European Commission expert and stakeholder groups. We have Benjamin Knirsch, you’re a policy advisor for enterprise policy and legal affairs at SME United.

The EU Association representing, I think it is over 65 SMEs, and craft organization for more than 30 countries in Europe. And then Sebastiano Toffoletti. Sebastiano, you have been heading the Secretariat of the European Digital SME Alliance since 2008. You are currently, well, SME Alliance is currently the largest. Europe Network for Digital Small and Medium -Sized Enterprises is around it. 45 ,000 enterprises in 28 countries. And myself, I’m Nathan Meurrens I’m the CTO of Eurid the .eu registry, and I will be facilitating the discussion today. Just before we go into the detail, maybe just to set up the scene and to put everyone up to speed, I will ask you Norbert, if you can help us understanding what in a few minutes, what is the Eurid and business wallets, what is the problem they aim to solve, and where do they fit in the broader digital ecosystem.

And maybe an important point is about interoperability, how can interoperability ensure that they simplify rather than complexify. That was border digital interactions.

Good morning Good morning everybody, thank you very much for that introduction I’m very happy to be with you and to give you a glimpse from our work on the European Digital Identity Framework I don’t know how many of you use digital signatures on an everyday basis, at least I do some of you probably do as well now what happens, at least in the countries that I know very well, that I work in, that I live in, when you use these digital signatures, that they are still today not entirely accepted, although they have to be accepted by law not everybody knows them, and if you interact yourself on a personal basis or a professional basis with your interlocutors personal interlocutors, business interlocutors, administrations, I think we all have made that experience that using digital tools is not something that is already well -known mainstream works.

It doesn’t. It works in some countries better than in others. It works in some circumstances better than in others, but it is not something that we can see across the Union. We have reached a stage of digitalization in the economy, in the administration society that we think is necessary to put us up to scratch and deliver on the ambition of the single market. You know that the Commission’s ambition on market is now very important for this College as well. So there really is something to do, and already back in 2020, we’ve received, the Commission has received a call from the European Council to develop a new legislative system for digital identity and trust services. We’ve put it on the table in 2021.

It is now. We are working on it now. We are working on it now. We are working on it being implemented. It has been negotiated in 24, so we have in 24, May 24, it entered into force, and now at the end of this year, at the end of 26, is the first major deadline for the implementation of that system. It requires all member states, all 27 member states to offer anybody of us, all of us, all citizens and residents of the EU, a European digital identity wallet, if we want to take it, I mean, on a purely voluntary basis, obviously. Now, what will that wallet do? It is a platform, and it is a fully interoperable platform, so it is developed to common technical specifications and following a common legislative framework.

It will allow us to identify ourselves with legal effect across the union for any public and private engagement. It will allow us to sign, it will allow us to share digital proofs, digital documents. We’ve created a new animal, so to say, which is called the electronic attestation of attributes. So, this is a concept of a technical, technically legal concept of a… piece of data that can express anything. It can be expressed here. In fact, we use it to express also the mobile driving license. So this is a technical framework that we now mainstream in EU legislation to express any official document which will be expressed and issued in future in the Union. But it can obviously also be used, this technical framework, this legal framework can be used to express any privately issued documents, any certificate, any educational declaration, anything your health insurance would like to issue for you.

So anything is possible. It’s actually, if you want, it’s a standard for a piece of paper and a pen and how this is written down and how this will be accepted across the Union. So I think we are, at least this is our ambition, we are entering a new stage of creating interoperability and digital effect across the Union with this wallet and we are. offering to this to citizens by the end of this year, this requirement. We do this also because we feel that we need to offer citizens an alternative to platform identification. I mean, I think when the discussion started on this back in 2020, 2021, I think it was very clear if we wouldn’t move on our side, de facto digital sphere in the digital world, that still at that time unfolded a little bit.

And I think we see much more clearer today than we saw five years ago. It was clear that the platforms would identify ourselves in one way or another. And they already did, and they still do. Now, I think what we have done, I believe, with that proposal is to take back control a little bit and to put this control in the hands of each one of us because it is user determined. The system is built in a sense that you will decide whether you use and you share your data or you do not. So each piece of data that you bullet will share. you will be able or you will have to explicitly consent to this sharing of data, whether it is your base or metrics or whether it is your identity data or whether it is a certificate, an educational certificate, an age verification certificate, an anonymous age verification certificate.

Let’s say all of this is under your full control and that’s written into European law and will be controlled and certified by independent authorities that that law is implemented in all member states. OK, so we create something which is with the citizen, which is controlled by the citizen, which complies with European law. There is nothing else like this on the market. Other systems work differently now. So that’s one side of the story. Now we are moving a bit towards businesses. So we started putting a proposal on the table, which takes the benefits or what we believe are the benefits and the opportunities of the European Digital Identity Wallet to the level of businesses, because we think, you know, the challenge that we have is private.

versus the same challenges or, let’s say, similar challenges we can see when we look at the business sector. Identification of businesses across Europe is not possible today. There are different competing systems. Now, business in a very wide sense, taking liberal professions or also small, medium -sized companies, large companies, also public administrations, if you want to interact in your business reality, also with the administrations, you pay taxes, you comply with legislative requirements. It is not possible to do this today in a seamless way across Europe, sometimes very, very often, actually, not even in your own country, but certainly not across borders. There are no systems that identify you together, that allow you to communicate seamlessly between businesses, between the administration and businesses across borders, and the business wallet will change this.

This is our ambition. So we continue. Create a system similar to. the European Digital Identity Wallet for natural persons. We create a similar system for businesses, which will obviously be seamlessly integrated into the natural versus wallet framework in the sense that we all still act as natural persons when we act on behalf of businesses and we identify ourselves in certain functions and responsibilities for businesses. But the business wallet will give us the opportunity to exchange documents with legal effect across borders. We will have a unique and interoperable communication channel between businesses and administrations that all member states and all businesses need to implement. So that, in our view, is a real game changer also on the corporate side.

This system is… I’m soon finished. This system is… This system is being negotiated, the proposal. So we are, today, I think, score a pair. We will have, hopefully, a general approach of the national government by June, and we hope to be able to conclude the negotiations by… at the end of this year, very much in line with the deployment timeline of the natural persons wallet, the European Digital Identity wallet. And, you know, the idea is that it will be rolled out within one or two years, depending on the outcome of the negotiations subsequently for the wallet. Summarized, we’ll be there at the end of this year. We require it to be accepted already when it is there by all public administrations for identification, authentication, and by private companies when you are required by law, by contract, to form strong customer authentication.

So, you know, I don’t know, for purchasing a SIM card, in many countries you have to identify yourself with your ID card. So if you use that analogy everywhere where you have to show your ID card, you want to show your ID card by contract, by law, you have to be able to use your European Digital Identity wallet and companies. So, required to accept it. This kicks in in a year’s time at the end of 2027. So this is… maybe in a sense the overall scheme I’ve forgotten that you also the third element is that you also have the right to identify yourself for your social media activities so any authentication by those what we call in our language VLOPS so very large online platforms if you wish to identify yourself with the protection of the European Digital Identity Wall protecting your data protecting your identity you will be able to do that also from day one on and we’re looking forward that this works and I’m not saying we’re sharpening our knives but we’re very curious that this will be implemented by the platforms so that’s it for the time being thank you.

Thanks a lot very interesting introduction and in this that shows the perspective that the wallet offers we’ll have some questions for actually all the people here sitting with me then I will ask you if you can manage to do stay under five minutes so that we have enough time also for the audience to participate. So maybe my first question is for you, Benjamin, from the perspective of a small and medium enterprise. Where do you see the business wallet remove the most friction, well, will remove most frictions in everyday business activities?

So good morning, everyone, and thank you for the invitation. How the friction can be removed, I want to start with the bigger picture with the single market. So here SMEs still face different procedures, platforms, and reporting requirements across Europe. And these difficulties are particularly evident in all the regions. So here the administrative fragmentation weakens the competitiveness and slows the cross -border activity. Here we see that the business wallet can support a more harmonized digital business environment, and it can also strengthen trust and legal certainty across borders. And coming specifically for SMEs, here the business wallet can be a practical simplification tool because SMEs have limited resources, and the repeated verification and reporting obligation create disproportionate burdens for them.

So the business wallet here can reduce the administrative burdens and simplify interactions with authorities and private actors. Here it’s important also the once -only principle because SMEs should not repeatedly submit the same information. Verified company information should be reusable securely across borders and procedures. This is particularly important for SMEs, with limited compliance activities. capacity. However, we see here a bit of problems because what is important to reduce this fragmentation, the interoperability, it should be applicable to all municipalities, not just the ones over 1 ,000 inhabitants like it’s foreseen in the EP draft report at the moment, because without the interoperability simplification will fail. It should integrate with all existing systems instead of creating parallel structures. If one SMEs can use this business wallet and the other not, it’s for unfair competition because we don’t have the level playing field.

SMEs need the time for competitors to do their business and not to see, can I use a business wallet in this municipality and in the other not, because municipalities are the most frequent contact point to authorities. for SMEs. so optional participation of municipalities would risk creating a fragmented digital landscape. Further here, important is the trust is essential for the uptake. SMEs need to have confidence in data protection and cyber security. To come into a bit of practical use cases for SMEs, as said, the cross -border company verification would be very important. Faster onboarding with banks, suppliers and platforms. Also for public procurement participation, VAT and tax procedures, secure communication with authorities and reduce repetitive reporting obligations.

So what we here see is more that we should start slowly by adding more and more use cases by the time. But that we can start fast with the business wallet.

thank you thank you Benjamin moving back to actually what Norbert mentioned also just before that indeed the use of the business wallet will be voluntary and then I would like to ask you Pedro if it is indeed as it will be voluntary what do you see are the key conditions to still create a strong uptake

no thank you thank you very much and thanks for the kind invitation to be here today so for those who don’t know business Europe we are a new umbrella organization we’re based here in Brussels 300 meters from here that represents 42 national business federations across 36 countries and we collectively speak for millions of companies and 99 99 % probably are members cross members with SME United and also with SME colleague here SME Alliance here so usually my work when I come to this house the Charlemagne, the Bel Air Mont is quite difficult because I usually come to criticize complexity, criticize the cost of compliance and also fragmentation within the internal market so my job here is pretty easy because on the business wallets in particular we are quite positive, we are quite supportive as Business Europe we think that this is one of those measures along for example with the EU -INC proposal that will bring real benefit to companies across the EU.

Taking just a quick step back Nathan, just to complement a little bit what Benjamin was saying in terms of the business case of course this is a tool for simplification, for cost cutting this is an obvious one and also work with ultimate beneficial owner registrations, updating of the business wallets they know it is not an easy That simple task is not even so easy as it seems. For example, in Belgium, you have two entities, separate entities. One is the commercial registers. The other one, the UBO, run by different ministries, different platforms. It is a mess. So business wallets can help businesses to face those difficulties within the internal market. In terms of compliance, it is a tool that will help with compliance.

But it’s not only the compliance of companies that actually enter the, let’s say, the scope of application of certain rules, certain directives and regulations. It’s also a tool that helps compliance of SMEs when their commercial partners are asking things from them. Because now we have more and more, let’s say, requirements in terms of due diligence, deforestation, forced labor, customs. So we have a lot of new legislation that is coming from the EU. This legislation. Imposes obligations that sometimes are passed on to SMEs and SMEs with the business wallets could have an opportunity to use it to fulfill those requests that come from the companies under those specific legislations. We also think that there could be an interesting case study to extend these two products.

We have the EU passports, digital passports, and integration between these two. So it’s not only to identify the company, but also integrating with what is behind the products of the company. So this is also one interesting business case. KYC is an obvious one as well, but this I will leave maybe to Jaromi to elaborate on this one. I’ve been involved also with EURID, and the KYC is extremely important. The difficulties of identification are there. So this is something that even the TLDs, CCTLDs will benefit greatly. At EUTOOL, ahead of the digital transformation, we can imagine in the future, in the near future, or the tomorrow or in a few weeks’ time, that you have AI agents representing companies.

By these AI agents, to specific, let’s say, mandate, its access to specific information can… represent companies using the wallet as well, limited features of the wallet. We can see this perfectly happening in the future, provided there are certain conditions there. And last but not least, the business case of the U -Ink that I mentioned earlier. The business wallets can be the infrastructure for the U -Ink, which, who knows, will use a .eu. All the U -Inks could use a .eu, could be also their, let’s say, their signature, their big signature. As for the recipe, to come to your question, and I’ll finish in one minute, we should not reinvent the wheel. So the business wallet should rely on existing infrastructure.

You have the EIDs framework, you have the commercial registers, all that good infrastructure. We need to work on the basis of authoritative data sources. So we need to make sure that the sources of the data for the business wallets are reliable, are safe. This is essential. So it’s not only working on the wallets, but the governments need to work on the original sources for the wallets. So this is very important. Thank you. and then finally but not least in terms of the timings we need to be more ambitious I mean 24 months is a long time and also obviously we need to be more ambitious on which authorities need to have this need to provide this we totally agree with SMU that the limit of proposing a limit or threshold for 10 ,000 people communes to get rid of this or not having to fulfill this makes no sense to us either so thank you very much Shari for picking up

Thank you Pedro of course I cannot agree more with what you mentioned on KYC and I’m sure Jaromir will have the opportunity to compliment that but before this I would like to still talk to Sebastiano and have your point of view regarding business and especially we know that small and growing business often face fragmented requirements across Europe and that is a very important barrier. So actually, what are the barriers that still need to be overcome before the wallets can deliver real value from your perspective?

Well, thank you for the question. I will perhaps elaborate something a bit more critical. I don’t disagree with what has been said by the colleagues, especially Business Europe and SME United. I think this is a great opportunity in terms of integrating the single market, and especially for SMEs. That said, I think we cannot ignore, let’s say, the elephant in the room here. What we have is a service which is essentially running on an infrastructure which is provided by U.S. hyperscalers. When we run the ID, the wallet, essentially our phones have to contact the servers of Google or Apple and get. That’s a confirmation. There has been little we could do on this issue until now, but it is an issue we cannot ignore.

We cannot ignore because it does create a technical dependency, which doesn’t go away. And if we are talking about wallet that do identification for European citizens and businesses, we are talking about millions and millions of users. We are talking about essential public services and private services. And I think ignoring the fact that all of this could be simply switched on. And off. By a U.S. company, which responds to the U.S. government. Is a risk which I think will be. I don’t think it can be ignored. I think we cannot pretend we live in the world of, let’s say, five or ten years ago. I think we have all seen that we are in a war in Ukraine.

There’s a war in Iran. We have Washington who has said several times they want to take Greenland. U.S. troops leaving Poland, and so on and so forth. I don’t need to continue. I think we cannot be the Europeans who put our head in the sand and pretend we don’t see the world in which we live. So having a digital wallet, business or citizen wallet, that ignores this problem for me is a nonsense. It is a nonsense for all the community of IT companies, technical companies, that we represent because we understand that technology is not a commodity. Technology is power. and the world of today is a world of power and geopolitics. So when we do our technical infrastructure, we have to foresee this.

And not only, I would say, because you understand what I’m talking about is the issue of technological sovereignty. There’s another thing which I think we can see as also as a great opportunity. And it is the fact that when we try to reclaim our digital sovereignty in Europe, we face a situation where there is a mass adoption of essentially American solutions, which makes it very, very difficult for anything alternative to really make it in the market. Maybe we… We have the right technical solutions, but since we don’t have the economy… created by the fact that, I don’t know if you want to replace things like a messaging app, for instance. It’s very difficult to replace WhatsApp or another American app.

Why? Because, obviously, none of the people around you is using the same app. So it’s very difficult to create European alternatives in a world which is already massively using non-European solutions. And the digital wallet is a piece of this. Why? Because by the fact that they have or they will have very massive adoption in Europe, meaning everyone, every citizen will have to have or already has the ID wallet and identification app. This means we can simply attach every other European alternative application to that wallet. such that we get automatic mass adoption of the European alternatives. This is a concept that I’m glad I heard many times, but especially from Minister Wildberger, from the German Minister of Digitalization, which said this very openly in the Franco-German…

Digital Sovereignty Conference last November in Berlin, and he repeated it in other occasions, because the people who understand how technology works understand that mass adoption is one of the big issues at the moment. And, again, it means we can use the digital wallets, if we do them the right way, to attach to them any European alternative we want to the U .S. technologies. So I think I wanted to raise these two topics, these two issues, and I hope they can be taken into account in the conversation.

Thank you, Sebastiano. Interesting intervention indeed. I would, and I think Jérôme will have the opportunity to talk about the technical aspects. I would argue that as a standard, the wallet does not impose any specific technical solutions. It does not impose to work with a specific hyperscaler. are there, but there is no the standards could be implemented with plenty of other infrastructure if we would like to implement those infrastructures. And maybe Jaramir can give some more words on this. And indeed, Jaromir it would be interesting from an Internet infrastructure perspective and, of course, particularly in your case from a CCTLD perspective, what should the registry care about when it comes to the wallet, and where do you see the most promising use case, and also what all can the collaboration within the technical community play?

Okay, thank you, Nathan. Good morning. So I don’t know to start to quickly respond to the question. You’re right. the regulation and implementing doesn’t prescribe any technical implementation we even have some attempts to build the wallets on the basis of web wallets from the local companies European companies like Ubico from Sweden for example that do not actually require to have the phone, it can be installed on the notebook let’s say, but on the other hand it’s true that for the vast majority we will probably use our phones that are mostly based on the Android or iOS so there is some dependency in that area but I would rather be addressed to other questions because I’m coming from country code top level registry top level domain registry from Czech Republic and the The CCTLDs have always struggled how to properly identify the registrant of the domain, mostly to find cybercrime.

And this has been also recently emphasized by the revision of an ISO directive that puts some more strict requirements for such verification. But already maybe six years ago, we worked together under the umbrella of Center Association of European Registries to actually connect the registries to existing digital identity infrastructure available through EIDAS nodes, now called like EIDAS 1 .0. And there are some registries that are fine. We are still using that. We are using that in Czech Republic. Estonia is using that. .eu registry is using that as well. But when we went through this exercise, we immediately recognized some limits of these infrastructures, infrastructure mostly with the limits for the accessibility by private sector, which cannot easily get access to these digital IDs, and the missing identity of legal persons that was supposed to be there, but only a handful of countries actually notified these identities.

And also the sort of like poor user experience when people were using this federated identity with a lot of redirects from the home country to the broker, to the EIDAS, to other country does not. So anything can interrupt in the way. And it’s really hard to track these errors. So with the new idea of the EUDI wallet, I think. it definitely looks promising to solve most, many and maybe most of these issues that we had with the previous infrastructure. So I believe it’s really promising. And to actually find whether it’s true, we joined three years ago the large -scale pilots for EUDI wallet together with the dot NLL registry SIDN to pilot these scenarios. Unfortunately, SIDN left in the middle of the project.

But at the end, we actually managed to develop the proof of concept of use cases for not just for the registrant verification, but also for using the wallet for the authentication to our registrant portals. And also we experimented with the possibility of the issuance of the credentials into the wallet, like some credentials or some attestations that could be specific to our industry, like the attestation about domain ownership. so we proved that it’s working the standards are on the good way we demonstrated this scenario live to the commission in December in EUDI World Launchpad event which was like the big event that captured what happened over the last couple of years in this space and right now we are the last thing to say is that we always talk like this is something that will come next year but apparently already now many European countries are already opening the sandboxes and allowing to test with the testing wallets so it’s already possible to develop to start work on that to experiment a little bit in depth and even there are some countries that are coming to the production with these wallets.

It’s not like official EUDI wallet because it’s not certified. It’s still missing for these final steps for the certification scheme. I think the French wallet is already available and actually usable in production. I think that next week the Danish wallet will be available with some possibilities of using it for the identifications. So it’s actually happening right now as we speak. So it’s not something that we would need to wait like next two years to start to work with that. Yeah, that’s probably right now

Thank you, Jaromir. So having heard all of that in the perspective of the technical community and also the perspective of the business it would be I believe an orbit. You will have some reactions. you will be able to share with you what strikes you the most, what are the most important challenges in turning the EODI wallet and business wallet into a widely adopted European ecosystem.

Okay. Maybe I should put more on the European digital identity wallet because it’s closer. The SaaS wallet we’ll still have to see, but I would expect the challenges not to be dramatically different. So I think for European digital identity wallet, the challenge obviously will be, will we use it? And we will use it when it is convenient for us. At the same time, we will use it when it is secure and will protect our data. So we will have to, in the conception, in the technical development of the wallet, you will have to square the circle if making, providing something which is actually as, I mean, you know, let me say it like this, as easy as to, as the platform wallets that we have today to use.

authenticate on board, but as secure as we can imagine it to be and as we want it to be under our full control. That, I think, will create the necessary trust, but also the necessary convenience for users to use. And we have to think about the young generation in particular who’s used to a different way of handling visual tools than we may be in our generation, if I can call it like this, or at least for myself I can say that. So I think it’s a bit that it has to be attractive for the user, it has to be attractive for businesses, because if we do not succeed in bringing attractive use cases into the wallets and these use cases, in my understanding, will largely be provided by businesses, payments be the first one.

This is an everyday use case. I think the statistics, you know that we pay 10 times, 20 times a day with a card, with a wallet. Today already we will use our mobile driving license, maybe maybe once a year, twice a year. So I think there is a clear tendency. So we have to make this wallet as an attractive platform for businesses and for the users, and that will require, I think, quite a bit of work. We believe that we have squared the circle as much as we can at the level of the regulation, but it is certainly a day -to -day struggle to make it right and put it right. So this is an ongoing challenge for us.

I think this is the key challenge.

Thank you, Norbert. I think it will be, we have…

Can I just maybe share some thoughts?

Yes, I would like also that we can open to the rest of the audience.

No, no, just to share some thoughts. So first on Jaromir, I’m very encouraged that there is already some test cases and things like that. But then turning to the Commission, I mean, this even makes it more important that we pass this regulation because we don’t want fragmentation. We want these new test cases, these new national solutions that they need to comply with a certain standard that is defined at the European level to make sure fragmentation is not there, to make sure that legal certainty is there for companies. So I think it’s very important. It makes it even more important for the future. And then maybe turning to Sebastiano, just a reflection on the spot. I mean, we do acknowledge the elephant in the room, obviously, obviously.

But then what is the solution? How do we handle this? Do we stop now the regulation until we have an hyperscaler at EU level? I mean, I think we’ll have to wait quite a few years. Do we make sure that the whole framework is well prepared? And well… constructed so that we are not reliant on someone just turning the button off at a whim that is sitting on the other side of the Atlantic. We would be very curious also to see the new strategy that is coming, is going to be published soon by the Commission, because I think I’m supposed to answer some of these questions. So these are just open questions to all of us.

Thank you, Pedro. Interesting point, again, also about technical implementation. Hyperscaler is one way forward, but there are different ways forward when it comes to implementation, and the hyperscaler is the only solution. Now, I would like also to turn to the audience and to the people online. Maybe there are some questions. We have a perspective of policy, registries, and business. Maybe in the audience some other perspective are, and people would like to share. Share comments, questions, use cases that they have in mind.

Okay, thank you I’m Vittorio Bertola from OpenExchange and speaking as someone who already years ago tried to create a European alternative to all the big tech logins with Google and Facebook and Meta that people are using and the experience was that even if we had all the big names of the European domain name industry on board we failed because people were already using Google, Meta and Facebook and didn’t want to stop using them and same for the website, the e -commerce website So there is a big problem of adoption at least for the part that regards the network persons and the fact that the IDAS 2 regulation says that the wallet has to be free doesn’t help because only very big companies that can afford to give this for free to hundreds of millions of people will be the dominant players So it’s either the state giving this to everyone or it’s the big tech, the American big tech companies.

Maybe the telcos could do it but I don’t know know if they are interested. So the question is, do we have a plan? Do we have a plan to avoid that? I mean, just one day after this starts, Google implements the IDAS 2 and then gives it for free to everyone and no other player can ever emerge. Because that’s the possible risk. And I mean, this will be a failure if no one uses it. But if everybody uses it, but it’s in the hands of the Americans and then they check the data of everything we do online, it will be an even bigger failure. Thank you.

Thank you. Someone would like to react already to the comments.

Well, I mean, from my perspective, obviously, the wallet will be free. Governments will pay for us in the first place. Whereas ID cards today in most countries are not free. In my country, you pay 25 euros for an ID card. So the wallet will be free. It will be free for the core functionalities, identification. and syndication signatures for personal use is already a step, I would say. Now, obviously, the concept of the wallet, as proposed by the Commission and agreed by the legislator, is a concept that integrates government and economy. It’s not a government -centered concept. It’s not an economic -centered concept. It’s a partnership concept because we believe that only the trust of government and the custom orientation of the economy, businesses will make that work because we live in a world where we use services.

And if we do not allow this wallet to provide those services in an attractive way for businesses and an attractive way for citizens, it’s going to be a failure from the start. And something that’s not going to be used is also not something that will improve digital sovereignty, in our view. So I think there is a balance to be made. There is a balance to be had in this concept now. What I also have to say, that’s an observation, I can leave it with you. We see a lot of interest in outside, outside of Europe for our concept. Now, the standards that we work on are to a large degree, I don’t have the percentage, but to a large degree, not yet there.

So we develop standards for high security digital identity that will be globally setting standards because they don’t exist. So we ask the standardization organizations to do them for us because they’re simply not there. In some areas, we adopt standards and we need to adopt standards because we have to be interoperable. Because without being interoperable, the system doesn’t work. But in many areas, we’re setting standards. And these standards and this work attracts a lot of interest abroad. Japan, Singapore, the US before the change of government, Canada, South America. A lot of world regions look at us, look at Europe today, because we are able to put a government -sponsored partnership concept on the table, which in their assessment preserves digital sovereignty to a certain degree, because we propose identification offered by the public sector.

Now, I will stop here, but I mean, this is the value proposition that this system. Thank you.

Thank you. but another side of it. So how does, this is a real concern, that the understandable drive for sovereignty of the EU might turn into protectionism on the outside? Starting with my home country, Switzerland, where that’s probably not a threat to the sovereignty of the EU, but nevertheless, how could Swiss operators then act on the EU market I know there is advocacy system is foreseen in the proposal. Will it really work and how quick will it work? But when it goes even further down, in particular Africa. So Africa is concerned that this will just bring up some new burden to somehow get out of the African problem.

Yeah. quite a few times but um i think the commission the vice president yesterday offered a bit of a or a hint of a reply to this because what she mentioned and i think we agree with her in business europe is we talk about open sovereignty collaborative sovereignty where we are able um of course those who want to work with us we can develop and grow and provide solutions together of course then we’ll have those that are in a competition and then want um what other other solutions and that’s a different story but i think the the concept of open sovereignty can really offer some some some replies to this uh i mean switzerland is a fantastic case for that where there’s i mean the synergies are enormous on many aspects so i don’t think this will be a purely protectionist move at all.

Yeah, I would also say that the approach, the digital sovereignty approach that is foreseen within Europe is not sovereignty by isolation. Indeed, Commissioner Virkunen mentioned several times yesterday, open source, contribution to open source. Again, this is something that is completely open, not only within the European ecosystems. Again, mainly what we are trying to avoid is vendor locked in, being tied into the roadmap of one specific vendor. But diversification of solution is also a way towards sovereignty. You wanted also to…

Yes. Yes, also on a similar note, also reacting on what Norbert said about the interest at the international level. And I agree because we heard the same. For Africa, as well as for any other regions, there is a lot of interest in what Europe does in this area and in other areas in technology. Why? Because everyone, the government and also the businesses, they understand more and more that we live in a sort of post -colonial world where, you know, the more they use technology which comes from either the U .S. or China, the offer they get is technologies which ultimately serve as tools to make them, to exert the power. Of those countries and what they do see, they do expect from Europe is an alternative.

and the alternative I think as it was said earlier cannot be that we end up with a solution which is run by Google or Apple yes unfortunately technically this is possible but if this is what Europe will offer the rest of the world then there’s not going to be any interest I can tell you there’s going to be interest in Africa and in other regions if we can offer something which is sovereign in an open manner not protectionist something that they can implement as they want with their own technology providers but that serves as an alternative as a sovereign alternative to the technologies that we get from US and China is expecting from Europe in my opinion.

but isn’t that just a new form of just rotate It might be very efficient for Europe, but for somebody outside the EU, it might just end up as red tape because you cannot do business in Europe without having your European identity.

I think this is more for the Commission, I suppose, but I think it would be interesting also because we don’t have a lot of time to see what are the comments of the people online. So we do have two online questions. One is to Jeremia or somebody from the SIDN in the audience. Okay. Why did SIDN leave the implementation project?

Well, as far as I know, it was related to the fact that they actually got rid of the part of the company that was doing their own wallet. so with this decision they also decided to leave this large scale pilot so it was like a strategy decision to not continue with the development of their own wallet

I don’t see anyone that I recognize at least in the room from SIDN in the audience and we have one more question it is addressed to Mr. Sagstetter what is sovereignty to a certain degree for the European wallet how much are you willing to compromise for usability

well it has to be usable it’s not usable there’s no point I think I mean it’s not usable I think the challenge is that we are, obviously, it’s not a single wallet issued in Brussels for every 27 member states. It’s a technical interoperability framework. It’s technical standards that we set, but the implementation of the wallet is different in Spain and Portugal and Estonia and Malta, now different to a certain degree, but it is interoperable. So we obviously work with all member states in an expert group, and we have a number of expert forums. There is one on UX, on user experience, where we make sure that we are as close as we can be to an attractive and user -friendly environment, but the responsibility of the final implementation is at national level.

I would just like to say one word, as I have to throw. There is obviously one thing I can say is that we provide a reference implementation. Also for member states to use. I mean, it’s not a plug -and -play product, but it’s a product you can take off the shelf. You can integrate in your own national environment, and that’s… is published open source. It’s on GitHub, and it can be used by Switzerland, by Burundi, used by anybody, and I’m sure there are a lot of companies out there who would love to provide all the support somebody can pay to implement it, you know, so that’s also the other side of the story. So it is, we believe it is an attractive product, and we intend to enable, obviously, to you know, business relationship with Europe and between Europe and partner countries not to create another gateway to this, but it is, you know, it is an enablement, it is a platform that enables this on the basis of European law, that’s what we see as a big difference to other possibilities and that way we are back into the discussion of digital sovereignty, I

Thank you. time is flying and I think it will be time to close this session. We are at 10 .27 and I think we are supposed to close at 10 .30 but it would be interesting to hear the final word what is the session statement and I think this is something that Minda Moreira who is here with us will share.

These are just some of the ideas that I took from this session. It was very compact but on the EU ID wallet that will be implemented by the end of 2026 across EU member states. It is meant to be a crucial and free tool for digital identification that empowers EU citizens to take back control, in which the EU citizens can decide what they want to use and what they want to share. By the same token, the EU business wallet is an alternative to overcome some of the problems that we are facing now, identification, to ensure seamless communication between businesses, authorities and private sectors across borders. There are some expectations of good interoperability, trust and security. The EU ID wallet and EU business wallet needs to be an attractive platform for users and business.

In terms of interoperability, trust and security, and the key challenge is really to make it work. If it works well, we can bring real benefits to citizens, but also to companies across the EU to overcome internal burden and to ensure compliance. The UID wallet and the U business wallet can meet expectations of interoperability, trust and security, but they need to ensure that the U digital sovereignty is taken into account, not sovereignty by isolation, but rather a collaborative and diverse one. What is needed or if there is any recommendations? Well, to make sure first that the wallets are attractive tools that are built on trust and security and that also set standards in Europe and beyond.

And they should be integrated with existing systems to avoid duplication. And we can also look in further integration with some other platforms. Such as the EU passport that already exists. if there is anything else that uh uh you would like to add to the messages that i didn’t take into account please you can if there are disagreements just let me know if there are strong disagreements uh as for the wording itself i can work it better later so this was just a draft

thank you from my perspective it summarized quite clearly what has been discussed uh it is uh 10 30 10 31 and the session was closing at 10 30 i believe there’s a next session that will start soon i don’t have in top of my mind the rest of the program so i do want to thank you all and thanks uh the the panel here for uh their that he um insightful interventions.