Legal and organizational challenges and solutions for achieving a pan-European electronic ID solution: or I am 621216-1318, but I am also 161262-43774.1 Do you know who I am?

In this article I discuss the creation of a pan-European eID and the legal and organizational challenges connected to that in cross-border transactions within the EU/EEA. I mainly focus on issuance procedures and (the lack of) a European “standard” on a unique identifier of physical persons that can be used in the eID. My main solution here is to use, as far as possible, existing national and international requirements on the content of passport and how they are issued. In addition I present two issues that I think the European Commission should focus on that would have a significant positive effect on the work on achieving cross-border interoperability. These issues are (i) setting up requirements for Validation Authorities and self-declaratory schemes and (ii) setting up a quality classification system, where different national security levels can be mapped up against neutral requirements adopted by the European Commission.