eIDAS 2.0 significantly impacts public sector digital services by requiring all EU Member States to accept the European Digital Identity Wallet for accessing public services, standardising how citizens authenticate themselves online, and raising the bar for cross-border identity recognition. Every public body that offers digital services must now support wallet-based access and comply with updated trust and interoperability requirements. This article walks through the key questions public sector organisations are asking right now.
What changes does eIDAS 2.0 bring to public sector organisations?
eIDAS 2.0, Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, amends Regulation (EU) 910/2014 and introduces a set of binding obligations for public sector organisations that go well beyond the original eIDAS framework. Where the first version allowed Member States to notify electronic ID schemes voluntarily, the new regulation makes acceptance of the European Digital Identity Wallet mandatory for all public services. Organisations can no longer choose whether to support wallet-based authentication; they must.
Under the updated framework, public bodies are required to recognise the EUDI Wallet as a valid means of identification when citizens request access to their services. This applies across all EU Member States, meaning a citizen from one country can use their wallet to access public services in another. The regulation also tightens requirements around assurance levels, data minimisation, and user consent, pushing public organisations to rethink how they handle identity data.
The shift is significant because the original eIDAS framework left too much room for inconsistency. Some Member States built robust national eID systems; others did not. eIDAS 2.0 is designed to close those gaps and create a genuinely unified digital identity landscape across Europe. Governance under the regulation is a shared responsibility: the European Commission manages the legal framework and adopts implementing acts that contain legally binding requirements; Member States provide or mandate wallet solutions, certify and notify them, and supervise actors within their jurisdiction; the European Digital Identity Cooperation Group supports cross-border alignment; and wallet providers, issuers, qualified trust service providers, and relying parties each carry defined obligations. For public sector organisations, this means updating authentication systems, reviewing data governance policies, and aligning with new technical standards.
- Mandatory acceptance of the EUDI Wallet for public digital services from 24 December 2026
- Stricter rules around data minimisation and selective disclosure
- Cross-border identity recognition becomes a legal requirement
- New assurance level requirements for high-risk services
- Tighter alignment with GDPR principles in identity data handling
Which public services must comply with eIDAS 2.0?
All public sector digital services that require identity verification must comply with eIDAS 2.0. This includes services such as applying for a passport or driving licence, filing taxes, accessing social security information, and registering for government programmes. Any online public service that currently requires a citizen to prove who they are falls within scope.
The large-scale pilots that tested the EUDI Wallet explored how the wallet can support access to government services, including applying for official documents, retrieving social security records, and interacting with public health systems. These pilot scenarios were not chosen at random; they reflect the most common ways citizens interact with government digitally, and they set the benchmark for what compliance looks like in practice.
Public services in healthcare, education, and social security are also directly affected. The DC4EU pilot consortium focused specifically on educational credentials and social security access, demonstrating that the wallet is intended to work across the full breadth of public administration, not only central government portals. Organisations in government digital services should treat this as a broad mandate rather than a narrow technical requirement.
How does the EUDI Wallet affect access to public digital services?
The EUDI Wallet changes how citizens authenticate themselves when accessing public digital services by replacing fragmented login methods with a single, standardised digital identity. Instead of managing different credentials for different services, citizens use their wallet to verify their identity and share only the data that a specific service actually needs.
This selective disclosure principle is one of the most important features of the wallet. A citizen applying for a benefit, for example, can share their national ID number and address without exposing unrelated personal data. Public services receive cryptographically verified information, which reduces fraud risk and removes the need for manual document checks.
For public sector organisations, this changes the user journey considerably. Services that previously required citizens to upload documents, visit an office, or complete lengthy online forms can move toward streamlined, wallet-based flows. The wallet is designed to be available to every EU citizen, resident, and business. Member States have a legal obligation to make wallets available to citizens by 24 December 2026, which is the regulatory deadline for their wallet obligations. Practical interoperability and national rollout will develop in phases, and the level of maturity across different Member States is likely to vary. Public bodies should begin preparing now so their systems are ready to accept wallet-based access as national solutions become available and certified.
The practical implication is that public sector IT teams need to integrate wallet acceptance into their authentication layers, ensure their systems can process verified attributes from the wallet, and update their user interfaces to guide citizens through the new process. Before requesting wallet data, a relying party must register with the national authority of its Member State of establishment under CIR (EU) 2025/848, specifying per intended use which attributes and attestations it will request. The wallet checks each presentation request against that registered scope.
What are the cross-border identity implications for public sector services?
eIDAS 2.0 requires public sector services to recognise digital identities issued by other EU Member States, meaning a French citizen can use their EUDI Wallet to access a German government portal, and vice versa. This cross-border recognition is a core obligation of the regulation.
The original eIDAS framework introduced mutual recognition of notified eID schemes, but uptake was uneven and the private sector was largely excluded. eIDAS 2.0 extends the scope and removes the opt-in nature of cross-border recognition for public services. Every public body must be able to accept and process wallet-based identities regardless of which Member State issued them.
This has real operational consequences. Public sector organisations need to ensure their systems can handle identity attributes from different national contexts, including variations in how names, addresses, and document numbers are structured. Interoperability between national systems is one of the primary goals of the large-scale pilots, which involved entities from 26 Member States as well as Norway, Iceland, and Ukraine. The insights from those pilots are feeding directly into the technical standards that public bodies will need to implement.
It is important to note that the EUDI Wallet framework is designed so that a certified wallet from one Member State can be used with an appropriate relying party in another Member State. This does not mean that every use case will immediately be available everywhere, that national registration requirements disappear, or that every credential automatically carries the same legal consequence in every jurisdiction. Sector-specific legislation continues to apply, and relying-party registration under CIR (EU) 2025/848 remains connected to the applicable national framework.
For organisations operating across borders, or serving citizens who do, this is an opportunity to simplify access and reduce friction. For organisations that have not yet considered cross-border scenarios, eIDAS 2.0 makes it a compliance requirement.
How should public sector organisations prepare for eIDAS 2.0?
Public sector organisations should prepare for eIDAS 2.0 by auditing their current digital identity infrastructure, identifying which services require identity verification, and planning how to integrate EUDI Wallet acceptance into those services. The legal deadline for Member States to make wallets available to citizens is 24 December 2026, and public services must be ready to accept them. Because national rollout and certification will develop at different speeds across Member States, organisations should begin preparation now.
Preparation involves both technical and organisational steps. On the technical side, organisations need to review their authentication systems and assess whether they can support wallet-based identity flows and the underlying cryptographic standards. On the organisational side, compliance teams need to understand the updated data minimisation requirements, and service owners need to redesign user journeys to reflect the new authentication model.
- Map your services: Identify every public-facing digital service that requires identity verification and assess its current authentication method.
- Review assurance levels: Determine which services require high, substantial, or low assurance, and align your identity methods accordingly.
- Assess technical readiness: Evaluate whether your current infrastructure can integrate with EUDI Wallet protocols, including OID4VP for presentation and OID4VCI for issuance, and identify what changes are needed.
- Register as a relying party: Complete registration with your national authority under CIR (EU) 2025/848, specifying per intended use which attributes and attestations you will request, before going live with wallet acceptance.
- Update data governance: Ensure your data handling practices align with the selective disclosure and data minimisation principles in eIDAS 2.0, and confirm that your organisation has an appropriate GDPR legal basis for each category of data it processes.
- Follow pilots and standards: Review the outputs of the large-scale pilots and the Architecture and Reference Framework, which provides the technical elaboration of the legally binding requirements set out in the implementing acts, to stay aligned with emerging technical requirements.
- Plan for cross-border scenarios: Make sure your systems can process identity attributes from other Member States, accounting for the fact that some cross-border use cases will become operational in phases.
Organisations in healthcare and other regulated sectors face additional complexity because identity requirements intersect with sector-specific regulations. Starting the preparation process now gives organisations the time to test, iterate, and build internal expertise before compliance becomes mandatory.
How TrustTech helps public sector organisations with eIDAS 2.0
Connecting public services to the EUDI Wallet requires integrating wallet acceptance into existing authentication layers, handling verified attributes from multiple Member States, and keeping presentation requests within the scope registered under CIR (EU) 2025/848. The ID Connector is an integration that lets relying parties accept every certified European wallet, whatever Member State issued it, for identification, login and qualified signing. EUDI Wallet acceptance comes first; the same interface also carries other IDs, such as national eIDs, bank IDs and identity documents, inside and outside the EU.
For public sector organisations, the ID Connector covers the key technical requirements of eIDAS 2.0 readiness:
- Wallet acceptance across all certified EUDI Wallet solutions, regardless of the issuing Member State
- Verification of issuer signatures against national trusted lists, aggregated in the EU List of Trusted Lists
- Revocation status checks using issuer-provided status information
- Validation of wallet unit attestations to confirm that a presenting wallet runs on a certified wallet solution
- Enforcement of the registered attribute scope, so each presentation request stays within what was declared to the national authority
- Support for qualified signing via a connected qualified trust service provider, where services require it
TrustTech’s platform is built on European digital identity standards and is designed for eIDAS 2.0 compliance. Explore TrustTech’s digital identity solutions or get in touch to discuss how your organisation can connect to the EUDI Wallet before the 24 December 2026 deadline.