Declaration from the Nordic and Baltic ministers of digitalisation on cross-border identity matching in the region

High adoption and usage of electronic identity (eID) paired with reliable population registries and strong identity governance procedures are common features for the countries in our region. These features have resulted in mature digital infrastructures. This enables seamless and secure access for residents of the region to thousands both public and private online services. 

To integrate the region further, the national authorities responsible for eID are cooperating to enable residents in the region to use their national eID to access digital services across national borders in the region.

We, the Ministers of Digitalisation of the Nordic and Baltic countries, will leverage the maturity and strengths in our countries and build upon the existing frameworks to ensure that the Nordic-Baltic cooperation within the field of eID will serve as a common platform for achieving cross-border identity matching in the region.

To enable this, we the Nordic and Baltic Ministers for Digitalisation will:

• Acknowledge that the quality and similarity of the digital infrastructures, eID solutions and population registries in our countries constitute a shared strength to enhance cross-border digital mobility in our region.
• Recognise the necessity of identity matching solutions and that these need to be made available for digital services in order to enable them to accept authentication with an eID from another country in the region.
• Highlight that solutions for identity matching must be designed and executed nationally in each country, supported by the agreed upon standards and Nordic-Baltic collaboration  that builds upon existing frameworks in the region and in the EU.
• Mandate the Nordic-Baltic cooperation within the fields of eID and digitalization to serve as the main collaborative arena for the work on cross-border identity matching in our region, and to develop a roadmap that outlines the multilateral actions that need to be taken and the parties that need to be involved.
• Encourage competent authorities in our countries, such as the population registries and digital service providers to include efforts on cross-border identity matching in their policies and agendas.
• Commit to working towards a multilateral agreement between our countries that will increase the accuracy, smoothness, and security of cross-border identity matching of natural persons in our region, while being aligned with the existing and upcoming regulations from the EU.