Monday: nothing to protect. Today: a deadline.

Monday: nothing to protect. Today: a deadline.

24 December 2026.

That is the date by which every EU member state has to provide its citizens with a digital identity wallet. Free of charge, for every natural person who wants one. It is not a target, not a roadmap item, not an ambition — it is written into law.

Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, Article 5a.

Two things follow from that date, and they are rarely said in the same breath.

The first: in two months, proving who you are online stops being a private arrangement between you and whoever happens to be asking. It becomes infrastructure, with rules, across twenty-seven countries.

The second: infrastructure built on the old question — collect it, hold it, guard it — would only move the pile. Same copies, better paperwork, bigger target.

The date is fixed. The architecture underneath it is still being decided.