The Hague: The EU Digital Identity Wallet is heading for a missed deadline, with 24 of the 27 member states still unable to offer citizens a certified wallet three months before the legal cut-off of 24 December 2026. The obligation comes from Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, the revised eIDAS framework, which requires every national government to make at least one wallet available so that people can prove their identity online and store documents such as driving licences and diplomas on their phones.

The picture across the Union is strikingly uneven. Italy is the clear exception, with close to eight million people using its wallet each month after Rome built on digital services that citizens already had on their phones. France, Finland and Bulgaria have been named among the frontrunners because they opened testing environments early, although Bulgaria is still drafting the national legislation needed to issue a wallet at all. Germany has set 2 January 2027 as its launch date, nine days after the deadline passes. The Netherlands has pushed its rollout back to late 2027 after a national pilot attracted just 57 users.

That Dutch figure is uncomfortable for a project whose success depends on adoption rather than on engineering alone. The European Commission has set a target of 80 per cent of citizens using a digital identity solution by 2030, and EU-funded large-scale pilots involving around 350 organisations issued more than 1,500 credentials and completed over 8,000 cross-border transactions. Those numbers show the technology works in controlled settings, yet they say little about whether people will reach for a government wallet when a password or a bank app already does the job.

The delay has also reopened a quieter argument about privacy inside the EU Digital Identity Wallet. The regulation promises selective disclosure, unlinkability and protection against the issuing state tracking where a wallet is used. Digital rights groups including European Digital Rights and the Austrian organisation epicenter.works argue that implementing acts drafted by the Commission have softened those safeguards, for example by asking revocation mechanisms only to hinder linkability and by adding a facial image to the minimum data set. Member states addressed the portrait question at an eIDAS committee meeting on 18 June, agreeing that national authorities may make it optional, but campaigners note that nothing forces them to do so.

For businesses, the more important dates lie further ahead. Regulated entities will have to accept the EU Digital Identity Wallet from December 2027, and banks face an earlier horizon in mid-2027 linked to anti-money-laundering rules on customer checks. The Commission has also designed its age-verification app so that it can be folded into national wallets, which could make the wallet the default route for proving age on online platforms.

Using the wallet will remain voluntary and physical documents stay valid. Yet the slippage creates an opportunity as well as an embarrassment. Governments that have not yet built their systems can still absorb changes to the technical specification before those choices are locked into procurement contracts and national databases. Whether the 2026 miss becomes a footnote or a lasting credibility problem will depend on how quickly Berlin, The Hague and the other late movers turn pilots into products that citizens actually want to use.