If the EU Commission has its way, all EU citizens should be able to use a European digital wallet from autumn 2026. However, the EU Commission had to postpone a crucial vote on Tuesday. Individual governments and civil rights activists criticize the project in its current form. There was no indication of a majority in the eIDAS Committee for any of the five drafts presented by the Commission. The committee includes one representative from each EU member state.
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Five documents, drafts of so-called Implementing Acts, specify requirements of a technical and organizational nature that providers and operators of the planned digital wallet must comply with: these include tasks, technical certification and protocols.
worrisome defect
Long before then, there had been criticism from civil rights organizations and experts: the drafted technical specifications contained worrying shortcomings, they warned in an open letter in August.
There was also criticism from the federal government: at the end of August, Stefan Schnorr, State Secretary at the Digital Ministry, and Markus Richter, the Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, expressed concerns in a letter about the completeness and quality of the technical specifications and implementing rules. of. To Thierry Breton, then EU Internal Market Commissioner.
Together with representatives of France, the Netherlands and Spain, Germany has prepared alternative drafts for implementing acts and sent them to the EU Commission. They focus more on the topics of security, data protection and interoperability as well as certification and standards compliance. The draft was then revised and voting was postponed.
One A Commission spokesperson told NetzpolitikThe implementing acts are targeted for adoption by November 21, 2024. Its aim is to achieve the widest possible agreement among member states. According to the network policy there are a total of 40 such acts, only five of them are on the agenda of the meeting so far.
The eIDAS amendment itself was criticized last year. In addition to digital wallets, the new version of the regulation also covers the topic of website authentication, i.e. the process by which the browser and the server interact over an encrypted connection. The amendment seeks to promote so-called Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWAC) by forcing browser manufacturers to accept them. The details of the regulation at least emphasize that browser manufacturers can continue to implement “their own processes and criteria” to “preserve and protect the privacy of online communications through encryption and other best practices.” Are. Critics, including Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the increase, but others remained skeptical.
(KST)
