Swiss digital identity law approved by parliament lower house

The Swiss parliament is preparing to debate a new law regulating its digital identity, paving the way for the planned introduction of the country’s e-ID in 2026.

The parliament’s lower house, the Swiss National Council, approved the E-ID Act on Thursday by a large majority.  The Council also greenlighted a budget of 100 million francs (US$113.3 million) for developing the digital identity system. The next step will be gaining the approval of Switzerland’s upper house, the Council of States, trade magazine Werbewoche reports.

In 2021, Swiss residents shot down an initiative to establish a digital identity in a referendum. Unlike the previous proposal, which would have allowed private companies to manage Swiss citizen data, the new scheme promises a system closer to self-sovereign ID (SSI) that will give users control over data and be issued only by the government.

Applicants would have to submit selfie biometrics and scan an ID document for matching and an authenticity check by federal police.

The European country unveiled the new proposal for the E-ID Act in November 2023, under the full name Federal Act on Electronic Identity Credentials and Other Electronic Credentials (BGEID).

In February, the Legal Affairs Committee of the National Council voted in favor of the draft law while submitting modifications that could further strengthen data protection, including an expansion of the e-ID architecture to ensure anonymous identification such as anonymous proof of age. The Committee also requested that the source code of the trust infrastructure software is published. During Thursday’s vote, all of the amendments were accepted.

Justice Minister Beat Jans said that the new e-ID Act has been fundamentally redesigned. The trust infrastructure for the digital ID will be provided by the Federal Office of Information Technology and Telecommunications while the Federal Office of Police will be in charge of issuing the e-ID.

“The aim is for us to be able to identify ourselves securely and easily in the virtual world from 2026,” says Jans.

And while the legal infrastructure of the e-ID project is still being debated, Switzerland is forging ahead with building up the new scheme. The country published a tender for an online identity verification provider in February.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  data protection  |  digital ID  |  legislation  |  self-sovereign identity  |  Switzerland