National identity cards in the European Economic Area

Travel document

As an alternative to presenting a passport, EEA and Swiss citizens are entitled to use a valid national identity card as a travel document to exercise their right of free movement in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

Strictly speaking, it is not necessary for an EEA or Swiss citizen to possess a valid national identity card or passport to enter the EEA or Switzerland. In theory, if an EEA or Swiss citizen outside of both the EEA and Switzerland can prove their nationality by any other means (e.g. by presenting an expired national identity card or passport, or a citizenship certificate), they must be permitted to enter the EEA or Switzerland. An EEA or Swiss citizen who is unable to demonstrate their nationality satisfactorily must, nonetheless, be given 'every reasonable opportunity' to obtain the necessary documents or to have them delivered within a reasonable period of time.

Additionally, EEA and Swiss citizens can enter a number of countries and territories outside the EEA and Switzerland on the strength of their national identity cards alone, without the need to present a passport to the border authorities (although Swedish and Finnish law does not allow their own citizens to travel outside the EEA/Switzerland without a passport, in practice meaning that direct outbound travel from Sweden/Finland to such countries with only an ID card is not possible):

1. Unlike Gibraltar, the British overseas territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia and the British Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey are not part of the European Union. Nonetheless, EEA and Swiss citizens are able to use their national identity cards as travel documents to enter all of these territories.
2. Monaco is de facto part of the Schengen Area under an arrangement with France, while San Marino and the Vatican City are enclave of Italy with open land borders. Further information: Schengen Area § Status of the European microstates.
3. EEA and Swiss citizens can use their national identity cards when travelling directly between mainland Europe (usually France) and French overseas territories. In practice, the only French overseas departments/collectivities which can be reached directly by plane from mainland Europe are French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion. In addition, EEA and Swiss citizens can use their national identity cards when travelling within/between French overseas territories (e.g. when flying directly between Guadeloupe and Saint Martin.
4. The national ID card must be in card format.
5. The national ID card must be biometric.
6. Applies only to EU citizens.
7. Applies only to EU citizens (except Croatians) and only when travelling on an organised tour entering/exiting at Aqaba airport.
8. Not applicable to nationals of Liechtenstein
9. Not applicable to nationals of Croatia. Except for nationals of France, who are granted the full 6-month visa-free period with an ID card, EEA/Swiss nationals using an ID card may only stay for up to 14 days

Turkey allows citizens of Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland to enter using a national identity card. Egypt allows citizens of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal to enter using a national identity card with a minimum remaining period of validity of 6 months. Tunisia allows nationals of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland to enter using a national identity card if travelling on an organized tour. Dominica, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines allow nationals of France to enter using a national ID card, and Dominica de facto allows nationals of (at least) Germany and Sweden to enter with a national ID card (as of March 2016). Gambia allows nationals of Belgium to enter using a national ID card. Finally, Greenland allows Nordic citizens to enter with a national ID card (only Sweden and Finland have them, whereas Norway will introduce them in 2018). In practice, all EEA and Swiss citizens can use their ID cards, because no passport control takes place on arrival in Greenland, only by the airline at check-in and the gate, and both Air Greenland and Air Iceland accept any EEA or Swiss ID card.

Although, as a matter of European law, holders of a Swedish national identity card are entitled to use it as a travel document to any European Union member state (regardless of whether it belongs to the Schengen Area or not), Swedish national law did not recognise the card as a valid travel document outside the Schengen Area until July 2015 in direct violation of European law. What this meant in practice was that leaving Schengen directly from Sweden (i.e., without making a stopover in another Schengen country) with the card was not possible. This partially changed in July 2015, when travel to non-Schengen countries in the EU (but not others, even if they accept the ID card) was permitted.

Similarly, Finnish citizens cannot leave Finland directly for a non EU/EFTA country with only their ID cards.

UK Border Force officials have been known to place extra scrutiny on and to spend longer processing national identity cards issued by certain member states which are deemed to have limited security features and hence more susceptible to tampering/forgery. Unlike their counterparts in the Schengen Area (who, by law, must only perform a 'rapid' and 'straightforward' visual check for signs of falsification and tampering and are not obliged to use technical devices – such as document scanners, UV light and magnifiers – when EEA and Swiss citizens present their passports and/or national identity cards at external border checkpoints), as a matter of policy UKBF officials are required to examine physically all passports and national identity cards presented by EEA and Swiss citizens for signs of forgery and tampering. In addition, unlike their counterparts in the Schengen Area (who, when presented with a passport or national identity card by an EEA or Swiss citizen, are not legally obliged to check it against a database of lost/stolen/invalidated travel documents – and, if they do so, must only perform a 'rapid' and 'straightforward' database check – and may only check to see if the traveller is on a database containing persons of interest on a strictly 'non-systematic' basis where such a threat is 'genuine', 'present' and 'sufficiently serious'), as a matter of policy UKBF officials are required to check every EEA and Swiss citizen and their passport/national identity card against the Warnings Index (WI) database. For this reason, when presented with a non-machine readable identity card, it can take up to four times longer for a UKBF official to process the card as the official has to enter the biographical details of the holder manually into the computer to check against the WI database and, if a large number of possible matches is returned, a different configuration has to be entered to reduce the number of possible matches. For example, at Stansted Airport UKBF officials have been known to take longer to process Italian paper identity cards because they often need to be taken out of plastic wallets, because they are particularly susceptible to forgery/tampering and because, as non-machine readable documents, the holders' biographical details have to be entered manually into the computer.

According to statistics published by Frontex, in 2015 the top 6 EU member states whose national identity cards were falsified and detected at external border crossing points of the Schengen Area were Italy, Spain, Belgium, Greece, France and Romania.

Identification document

There are varying rules on domestic usage of identity documents. Some countries demand the usage of the national identity card or a passport. Other countries allow usage of other documents like driver's licenses.

In some countries, e.g. Austria, Finland and Sweden, national identity cards are fully voluntary and not needed by everyone, as identity documents like driver's licences are accepted domestically. In these countries only a minority have a national identity card, since a majority have a passport and a driver's licence and don't need more identity documents. This is so also for Ireland where those who have a passport and a driver's licence have less need for the passport card.

EEA and Swiss citizens exercising their right to free movement in another EEA member state or Switzerland are entitled to use their national identity card as an identification document when dealing not just with government authorities, but also with private sector service providers. For example, where a supermarket in the UK refuses to accept a German national identity card as proof of age when a German citizen attempts to purchase an age-restricted product and insists on the production of a UK-issued passport or driving licence or other identity document, the supermarket would, in effect, be discriminating against this individual on this basis of his/her nationality in the provision of a service, thereby contravening the prohibition in Art 20(2) of Directive 2006/123/EC of discriminatory treatment relating to the nationality of a service recipient in the conditions of access to a service which are made available to the public at large by a service provider.

On 11 June 2014, The Guardian published leaked internal documents from HM Passport Office in the UK which revealed that government officials who dealt with British passport applications sent from overseas treated EU citizen counter-signatories differently depending on their nationality. The leaked internal documents showed that for citizens of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden who acted as a counter-signatory to support the application for a British passport made by someone whom they knew, HM Passport Office would be willing to accept a copy of the counter-signatory's passport or the national identity card. HM Passport Office considered that national identity cards issued to citizens of these member states were acceptable taking into account the 'quality of the identity card design, the rigour of their issuing process, the relatively low level of documented abuse of such documents at UK/Schengen borders and our ability to access samples of such identity cards for comparison purposes'. In contrast, citizens of other EU member states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain) acting as counter-signatories could only submit a copy of their passport and not their national identity card to prove their identity as national identity cards issued by these member states were deemed by HM Passport Office to be less secure and more susceptible to fraud/forgery. The day following the revelations, on 12 June 2014, the Home Office and HM Passport Office withdrew the leaked internal guidance relating to EU citizen counter-signatories submitting a copy of their national identity card instead of their passport as proof of identity, and all EU citizen counter-signatories are now able only to submit a copy of their passport and not of their national identity card.

Common design and security features

On 13 July 2005, the Justice and Home Affairs Council called on all European Union member states to adopt common designs and security features for national identity cards by December 2005, with detailed standards being laid out as soon as possible thereafter.

On 4 December 2006, all European Union member states agreed to adopt the following common designs and minimum security standards for national identity cards that were in the draft resolution of 15 November 2006:

The card can be made with paper core that is laminated on both sides or made entirely of a synthetic substrate.

The data on the card shall contain at least: name, gender, birth date, nationality, a photo, signature, card number, start and end date of validity. Some cards contain more information such as height, eye colour, issue place or province, and birth place.

The biographical data on the card is to be machine readable and follow the ICAO specification for machine-readable travel documents (however, Greece continues to issue solely non-machine readable cards, while Italy is in the process of phasing out the issuing of non-machine readable cards in favour of biometric cards).

Electronic identity cards

All EEA electronic identity cards should comply with the ISO/IEC standard 14443. Effectively this means that all these cards should implement electromagnetic coupling between the card and the card reader and, if the specifications are followed, are only capable of being read from proximities of less than 0.1 metres.

They are not the same as the RFID tags often seen in stores and attached to livestock. Neither will they work at the relatively large distances typically seen at US toll booths or automated border crossing channels.

The same ICAO specifications adopted by nearly all European passport booklets (Basic Access Control - BAC) means that miscreants should not be able to read these cards unless they also have physical access to the card. BAC authentication keys derive from the three lines of data printed in the MRZ on the obverse of each TD1 format identity card that begins "I".

According to the ISO 14443 standard, wireless communication with the card reader can not start until the identity card's chip has transmitted a unique identifier. Theoretically an ingenious attacker who has managed to secrete multiple reading devices in a distributed array (eg in arrival hall furniture) could distinguish bearers of MROTDs without having access to the relevant chip files. In concert with other information, this attacker might then be able to produce profiles specific to a particular card and, consequently its bearer. Defence is a trivial task when most electronic cards make new and randomised UIDs during every session [NH08] to preserve a level of privacy more comparable with contact cards than commercial RFID tags.

The electronic identity cards of Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain all have a digital signature application which, upon activation, enables the bearer to authenticate the card using their confidential PIN. Consequently they can, at least theoretically, authenticate documents to satisfy any third party that the document's not been altered after being digitally signed. This application uses a registered certificate in conjunction with public/private key pairs so these enhanced cards do not necessarily have to participate in online transactions.

An unknown number of national European identity cards are issued with different functionalities for authentication while online. Some also have an additional contact chip containing their electronic signature functionality, such as the Swedish national identity card.

Portugal's card had an EMV application but it was removed in newer versions from 16 January 2016.

Overview of national identity cards

Member states issue a variety of national identity cards with differing technical specifications and according to differing issuing procedures.