Representatives of the EU Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a political agreement on the core elements of a new framework for a European digital identity (eID) in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The requirement that member states assign a lifelong unique personal identification number to each citizen, which had been opposed by Pirate Party MEPs in several committees, was completely removed from the draft. The Pirates were also able to prevent the mandatory acceptance of state browser certificates, but rejections due to insufficient security will need to be justified. The details of the agreements will now be negotiated in further technical meetings and will probably be finalised in another trialogue under the Spanish Presidency in autumn.

Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, who negotiated the bill in the co-advisory Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), comments:

“We successfully prevented the allocation of a unique, permanent personal identification number that could have been used to comprehensively record and monitor our lives. Instead of a uniform personal identification number, different user numbers can be assigned from one service to another in the future. This must now be be made clear in the wording of the legislation.

Nevertheless, there is a great danger that the planned ‘digital identity’ will gradually displace the anonymity on the internet that protects us from profiling and identity theft. We have not been able to enforce the right to use services without electronic identification or authentication. Those who register with social media via their eID wallet out of convenience will therefore sacrifice their anonymity.

Many details are still unresolved. In the further negotiations, we Pirates will push for the sensitive data of citizens in their digital wallets to be stored exclusively in a decentralised manner on their own devices – unless they opt for centralised storage. Decentralised data storage protects our data from mass hacks and identity theft. We also demand guarantees that non-users of the theoretically voluntary eID system must not suffer any disadvantages and can use alternative identification or authentication methods.“

Pirate Party MEP Mikuláš Peksa, who sits at the negotiating table for the Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy (ITRE), comments:

“Yesterday, we made a significant shift in the design of eIDAS 2.0, which will be privacy-conscious and provide users with a user-friendly electronic wallet for all kinds of IDs and certifications. We already know that e-signatures will be free for individuals, and in the draft, we have finally eliminated unique persistent identifiers that could facilitate snooping. However, there is still a lot of work to be done. Nonetheless, this stands as a nice victory of reason, for the time being.”

Background: In the course of the so-called EIDAS reform, the planned “European Digital Identity” is to give EU citizens access to public and private digital services and enable online payments. The Federal Ministry of the Interior mentions the opening of a bank account, the registration of SIM cards, the digital storage of driving licences and the storage of digital prescriptions, but also the identification for mail or social media accounts.

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Pirate Party MEP and digital freedom fighter Dr Patrick Breyer criticises yesterday’s draft bill by the EU Commission to introduce a “Digital Euro”:

“The introduction of digital cash would be long overdue in the information age. Digital cash could be as anonymous and freely usable on the internet as notes and coins. However, the ‘digital euro’ now proposed by the Commission does not deserve that name. Digital technology is to be misused to monitor, limit and control our finances to an extent never seen with cash.

While cash can be accepted and spent anonymously at any time, which is important for undocumented refugees, for example, it will only be possible to receive and spend digital euros with an account against presentation of identification. While people are allowed to hold and pass on unlimited amounts of cash, the amount of digital euros in our hands will be limited in the future. And while with cash even confidential payments and controversial donations have so far been possible anonymously and without fear of becoming known, trace-free payments in digital euros are to be completely impossible online and limited offline to an unknown and ever-changing amount. The declared aim of fighting money laundering and terrorism is just a pretext to gain more and more control over our private transactions. Where every payment is recorded and stored forever, there is a threat of hacker attacks, unauthorised investigations and chilling state oversight of every purchase and donation.

Cash is financial freedom without pressure to justify spending. What medicines or sex toys I buy is nobody’s business. For thousands of years, societies around the world have lived with cash that protects privacy. The EU Commission wants to deprive us of this financial freedom for online payments. In the legislative process, this birth defect must be corrected. We need to find ways to take the best features of cash into our digital future.”

patrick-breyer.de/en/the-digit…