Fresh EUDI Funding Reflects the Pilot-to-Scale Challenge in Government ID Projects

The European Commission has issued a notice announcing nine calls worth €204 million aiming at moving digital Identity (ID) projects from pilot phases to certified, scalable systems. Coming alongside an amendment to the Digital Europe Work Programme 2025-2027, it is clear that the pressure is on to accelerate digital ID solutions to the production phase, with the need for live, trusted infrastructure becoming more urgent. While solutions have been in the works for years, with public-private partnerships driving development, progress has been slow. This fresh injection is focused on near-term results, with the primary goal of certified national deployments in place.

The message sent by this fresh wave of funding is clear—it’s a reassertion of intent, and reflective of a cynicism in the market about the ability to attain deployment by the existing deadlines. For the European ID market, the problem at hand is harmonizing the systems of dozens of nations with a single infrastructure. This drive to produce a highly universal infrastructure, however, is set against the context of growing threat—with Entrust’s 2026 Identity Fraud Report reporting a 40% increase in injection attacks (bypassing live capture feed) and a 58% increase in deep-faked selfies compared to 2025. In this environment, it remains to be seen if, for example, the €15 million call assigned to the development of the EUDI wallet and Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) will be sufficient. Interoperability was always a significant challenge in itself—and it’s becoming more difficult year-over-year with novel attacks, and varying policies, compounding the issue. The regulation states a policy maximizing the reuse of verification, minimizing repeated interaction—yet in the payment market, 82% of fraud occurs after onboarding, leaving nations liable to disagree on suitable verification periods, thus complicating the requirements for vendors.

The technical challenges in providing large-scale interoperable systems are acutely felt in the identity verification market at large, and the lack of cross-applicability in existing solutions is driving a key opportunity for identity infrastructure vendors. Entrust, for example, announced in April the first Unified Cryptographic Security Platform, highlighting the fundamental fracture in verification. If cryptography—the technology fundamentally underpinning trust in a system dependent on this factor—is not aligned between national or even departmental borders, no true “seamless” multi-use case infrastructure can be achieved. Fresh funding, aimed at soon-to-be-deployed solutions, will help drive the EUDI project forward toward implemented interoperability—provided this remains at the core of developments. Should pressure to meet deadlines encourage botched “translation” layers, the premise of the pan-European solution will be undermined in the long term. Fundamental compatibility must be comprehensively achieved, such as by unifying cryptographic suites.

The varying pressures and risk thresholds of receiving countries must also be accommodated. The simple response to a growing, and increasingly sophisticated, threat of fraud is dispersion of policy. While fundamentals may be agreed on an international level, each member nation has its own fraud landscape to tackle, and the traditional linkage of digital ID with existing ID infrastructure further compounds this difference. Solutions must, therefore, offer flexibility, allowing for granular policy implementation within one universal solution.

Finally, the route to scale must be clear. The urging of the European Commission toward market-readiness should drive vendors toward rapid deployment schedules, with modular design, readily customizable policy integration, and cross-departmental flexibility being essential features. Mature players have already recognized the importance of this approach, but the key differentiator in the coming 18 months will be how quickly this capability is attuned following post-pilot, early-adoption feedback.