WHAT’S IN YOUR WALLET?: EVALUATING EUROPE'S EFFORTS TO PILOT NEW DIGITAL IDENTITY WALLETS

Abstract

In April 2024, the European Commission published the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation, which introduced the European Union Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) and four associated large-scale pilot projects. From this regulation, the Commission was driven to develop a network infrastructure of smartphone-accessible digital ID wallet applications across EU Member States by the end of 2026. eIDAS 2.0 is the most ambitious interoperable, cross-border digital identity project launched across the world to date. Motivated by this substantial eID development, I ask, how does the EU navigate tensions concerning a state’s role in identity architecture and infrastructure as it rolls out digital identity wallets in response to state and market pressure? I assume, in framing this question, that the critical marks of a successful digital ID Wallet project are usability, privacy preservation, and user attractiveness. Using a mixed-methods approach of qualitative interviews with pilot facilitators and experts, along with desk research on primary sources, this thesis conducts a pilot design evaluation of the EUDI Wallet project contextualized by Europe’s longer eID history and Harari’s concept of the dataist state. The results of my pilot evaluation are generalizable to broader cross-border eID development projects. My three hypotheses hold that limited sector area use case focuses should accelerate pilot evaluation timelines (H1), pilots catered to government end users should see more success than those aimed at industry end users (H2), and disagreements surrounding the Wallet’s Architecture and Reference Framework should act as a primary driver of bottlenecks (H3). After evidence review and analysis, I find H1 to be false, H2 to be inconclusive, and H3 to be true. In addition to these assessments, I determine that only two of these three features—usability and privacy preservation—are standardized by design within the eIDAS 2.0 regulation and subsequent EUDI Wallet project. Attractiveness, rather, is a decentralized success feature reliant on existing penetration rates and local attitudes towards eID. To adhere to all three critical design features, the EUDI model sacrifices adherence to scheduled timelines and linear development. I find that as the European Commission continues to emphasize self-sovereignty and act using a ‘think global, act local’ approach, the EUDI Wallet is a legitimate objective.