This research bridges the gap between the existing digital identity system of the European Union (EU) and the nascent EU standard for European Digital Identity Wallets (EUDIWs). To inform ongoing policy making, it highlights the importance of an important, yet, systematically overlooked feature of digital identity solutions on the example of digitally issued and signed educational credentials. Any digital identity requires an identifier to which data is tied, but a user may not always desire to share this identifier. The standard for EUDIWs does not acknowledge or use this feature, putting EU citizens’ and EU residents’ privacy at risk.
The University of Malta uses a solution named Europass. It allows students to derive signed portable document files (PDFs) from their notarised digital diploma without using a unique identifier in their digital signature. Europass is a centralised solution, which will potentially be replaced by decentralised solutions like the EUDIW. The EUDIW allows users to receive, store, and present trusted documents on their smartphone. In its current state, however, the EUDIW standard values confidential authenticity over privacy and stays behind the capabilities of decentralised identity at large.
At the same time, small jurisdictions have invested in distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to deliver privacy preserving decentralised identity solutions. This study shows that DLTs are conducive, but not required to implement these features. Thus, it contributes to the technical foundation of PhD research on narratives that advocate for public funding of DLTs in small jurisdictions.