Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (‘ITRE’) on Thursday 3 February debated the European Commission’s proposal for a digital ID wallet in the EU (see EUROPE 12843/10).
“The EU has come a long way in having an ecosystem for digital identity, but we need to accelerate. 60% of citizens want a secure identity for all online services and 72% want to know how this data is used. There are still open questions and we will have to deal with them”, summarised Romana Jerković (S&D, Croatia).
In concrete terms, the discussions focused largely on interoperability. On this point, some MEPs stressed the need to address the issues of cross-border aspects and data sharing between Member States.
A very large majority of MEPs also highlighted the importance of trust in the digital portfolio, without which citizens’ support will not be possible.
In addition, some members of the ITRE Committee questioned the link between the digital portfolio and justice issues. “The question of allowing the police to search these wallets will have to be answered”, said Cristian Terheș (ECR, Romania).
Finally, Romana Jerković, rapporteur, also stressed the importance of a careful approach in order to maintain coherence with the texts, currently under negotiation, on digital services (DSA) (see EUROPE 12873/9), digital markets (DMA) (see EUROPE 12876/19) or cyber security (see EUROPE 12846/1).
The European Commission presented its proposal for a digital identification wallet (see EUROPE 12733/1) on 3 June 2021. This should eventually allow citizens to have their identity documents online and have them recognised in all EU Member States. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)