And remarkably few people are talking about it. By the end of 2026, every EU member state must offer its citizens a so-called EU Digital Identity Wallet. We’ve already reported on this here before. The idea sounds unspectacular at first — a digital wallet on your smartphone. But the impact could be enormous.

That’s because the wallet is meant to do far more than today’s online ID function. In future, citizens should be able to store and prove things like:

And across borders, throughout the whole of Europe! For the first time, this creates a shared digital identity infrastructure for around 450 million people.

The real innovation, though, doesn’t lie in the wallet itself, but in what it makes possible. Anyone who wants to rent a flat abroad, start a business, or apply for a university place today often has to obtain documents, translate them, send them off, and prove them all over again. The EU Wallet is meant to make many of these proofs digital, standardised, and instantly verifiable. That could create something Europe has been missing until now: a shared digital space of trust.

Image: This image was created with AI.

Sources:

• European Commission – European Digital Identity Wallet
• eIDAS 2.0 Regulation (EU)
• European Commission – Digital Decade Programme

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