Using digital self-services and electronic identification across the EU/EEA

Alongside other EU/EEA countries, Denmark wishes to make it easier to use digital self-services across national borders. An increased degree of digital self-service will increase the tempo and agility for users when they seek contact with authorities. For authorities, this will simultaneously decrease response time regarding inquiries. Likewise, the amount of manual handling of cases will decrease.

EU legislation

The eIDAS regulation from July 2014, a regulation concerning electronic identification and trust-self-services for the use of electronic transactions within the European single market, aims to improve the usage of digital self-services for citizens and companies across the internal borders of the EU/EEA. This is done by requiring that citizens must be able to use their national eID (for example, the Danish NemID/MitID) across national borders.

Digital self-services from public authorities, in which eID is a requirement in accordance with national law or administrative practice, must meet the requirements of Article 6 and the demand regarding usage of national eID across national borders, described in the regulation. The eIDAS regulation demands that digital self-services must be accessible with an eID from other EU/EEA countries. Furthermore, it is required that member states acknowledge each other’s eIDs.

Read the eIDAS regulation at eur-lex.europa.eu

Danish implementation

The Danish Agency for Digitisation has developed a Danish eIDAS infrastructure, in which authorities can integrate their digital self-services. This infrastructure communicates with eIDAS-infrastructures from other member states.

Thus, Denmark has ensured that citizens can use their NemID/MitID in foreign digital self-services. Furthermore, foreign eIDs can access Danish digital self-services. Some Danish digital self-services are ready to acknowledge citizens with an eID from an EU/EEA country. However, there are differences between how far other countries in EU/EEA have come with the development of their national eIDAS infrastructure.

As an eID user who aims to use it across the EU/EEA countries, you will experience an expansion of the opportunities in the next few years.