Identity cards to work across Euro borders

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The European Commission has unveiled a pilot project which would allow cross-border recognition of national electronic identity (eID) systems.

The European Commission (EC) and 13 member states (including the UK, France, Germany and Spain) will work together on a project called STORK (Secure Identity Across Borders Linked). It aims to allow different national electronic identity schemes to be recognised across national systems.

EU citizens would be able to prove their identity and use national electronic identity systems (in the form of passwords, ID cards, PIN codes and others) throughout the EU, rather than just in their home country.

"Electronic identities do not yet do enough for mobile EU citizens," said Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"By taking advantage of the development in national eID systems and promoting mutual recognition of electronic identities between member states this project moves us a step closer to seamless movement between EU countries that Europeans expect from a borderless single European market."

The EC said that although the implementation of online public services was progressing rapidly, the benefits of services disappeared once citizens tried to use their cards in another country.

The 10 million Euro three year project aims to align and link systems without replacing existing ones. It would allow citizens to identify themselves electronically in a secure way and deal with public services from PC's or mobile devices. One example was of EC gave an example of a student registering in a foreign university using their own country's home university.

It was claimed that around 30 million national eID cards were already used by citizens to access public services - such as claiming social security and claiming for unemployment benefit.

In the UK of course, the successful use of cross-European eID systems would depend on the implementation of the national ID scheme. Late last month five firms were chosen to sign framework projects for the project which could cost £2 billion.

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