Introduction of the ECI against EU ID Checks

General ECI Stop EU ID Checks
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Please find below the email received, and the contact person. Please don’t hesitate to use this topic for questions.

Dear Pirates,

we to invite Pirate Parties across Europe to officially support the planned European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “Stop EU ID Checks”, which addresses the risks of the proposed EU Digital Identity framework under the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation.

Background and context:
The EU is introducing a new Digital Identity framework which, in its current form, contains serious risks for civil rights, internet freedom, and technological sovereignty. While digital identities can be useful, the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation introduces elements that could fundamentally undermine privacy and freedom online:

  • The possibility of a central, lifelong identifier for every citizen, which could enable cross-domain profiling and surveillance.
  • The requirement for browsers to accept Qualified Web Authentication Certificates (QWACs), even if they are insecure, creating a precedent for state-controlled “backdoors” into encrypted traffic.
  • Heavy reliance on Apple/Google smartphone infrastructures (Trusted Execution Environments), which undermines European technological sovereignty and risks excluding citizens without modern devices.
  • The absence of binding protections for relying parties (banks, platforms, companies) that will request and process digital identity attributes, opening the door to abuse.
  • The danger that the Digital ID could become an “Internet ID scanner”, restricting what adults can access online or creating the infrastructure for censorship-by-design.

Measures demanded by the ECI:
The ECI calls for an alternative approach:

  • Voluntary use of any EU digital identity, never mandatory.
  • Decentralised, privacy-friendly architecture without a central lifelong identifier.
  • Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) as a mandatory technical standard, so attributes can be verified without exposing personal data.
  • Clear rules for relying parties , with registration and transparency obligations to prevent abuse.
  • No mandatory QWAC certificates , so browsers can continue to protect users against insecure certificates.
  • Technological neutrality and sovereignty , ensuring the system does not depend solely on US tech giants.
  • Preservation of analogue alternatives , so no citizen is excluded from access to services.

Proposed measures:

  1. Outreach to Pirate Parties across Europe : Each party is invited to support this ECI and nominate at least one member from their country to join the Organisers’ Committee (legal requirement: 7 members from 7 EU countries).
  2. Public communication : Once the ECI is officially registered by the European Commission, Pirate Parties are encouraged to publicly announce their support and promote it within their networks.

Justification:

Pirate Parties are invited to be involved right from the launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Stop EU ID Checks’. This initiative is not a Pirate-exclusive project, but with our active participation we can help shape it from the very beginning.
This ECI is directly aligned with the core values of the Pirate movement: privacy, civil rights, digital freedoms, and citizen empowerment. The campaign will strengthen Pirate visibility at the European level and show that Pirates are leading the defense of digital rights in Europe. With the ECI, we can mobilise citizens across the EU and ensure that the Digital Identity framework is implemented in a way that respects freedom and privacy instead of undermining them.

Call to action:
We ask the PPEU Board to distribute this motion to all European Pirate Parties, inviting them to:

  • officially support the ECI,
  • nominate members to the organisers’ committee,
  • and join in building a pan-European campaign to protect digital freedoms.

Feel free to contact me if you got questions

With kind regards @pr02

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Do we have a link here? Or it just only begun?

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At the moment it’s a group of activists preparing the campaign because of the dangers of a less-than-ideal EU ID check system. In the UK we can already see how such schemes might look. If we gather enough support from Pirates across the EU, we will set up a working group to finalise the ECI text and file it. Right now we have a base draft with a list of concerns, but it needs refining for the official ECI submission. So there’s no link yet, but this is the chance for Pirates to be in at the ground floor and position ourselves early for the campaign.

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This needs better branding, imo. It’s a lot of good ideas but this name doesn’t convey it.

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For the ECI itself the branding needs to remain clear, neutral, and directly describe what we are asking the Commission to do. Around the ECI, however, we can build a broader campaign with stronger, more populist messaging that conveys the urgency and mobilises people.

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I’ll leave that to the professionals, but my complaint was about clarity. “No ID checks” means a lot of things and nothing that makes me immediately think of the internet (remember there’s EU countries where it’s mandatory to have your ID on your person when you leave the house, I thought of police checkpoints).

I had to read the full extended description to understand what we were talking about.