Digital ID kerfuffle
The app the Commission issued this month is the latest hiccup in a years-long effort to get tech apps up and running to check the age of internet users.
Brussels and EU member capitals have already spent two years working on “digital identity wallets,” which should be available across Europe by the end of 2026.
But the EU executive announced last July it would roll out a “mini-wallet” designed to help tech platforms check the age of their users, as worries mounted about the impact of social media on the health of children. The mini-wallet was meant to come out before the broader digital ID apps; it’s the one the Commission showcased in mid-April and is officially recommending to countries this week.
Countries that were already working on their own digital ID apps, like Denmark, France, Greece and Spain, were selected to be frontrunners in testing the mini-wallet.
According to Poland’s Digital Affairs State Secretary Dariusz Standerski, the new app is “secondary” and “complementary” to the broader digital ID wallet the country has been working on. That wallet “will always be the primary way” to verify people’s age online, he said in an interview.
The Commission’s tech architecture underlying the app is designed to ensure that national applications will work together with the European Union’s own app.
It doesn’t matter if “there’s two, three, five or ten apps. There will be many wallets,” Greece’s Papastergiou said.
Emile Marzolf and Larissa Kögl contributed to this report.