Yesterday evening/today, there was a release in the German press about the future refusal of the supervisory body for trust services accredited in Germany to continue authorizing auto-identification.
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First of all:
The topic is irrelevant for Swisscom, as Swisscom is accredited in Austria and not subject to the German supervisory body (BNetzA), but to the RTR.
Background:
The authorization of procedures for online identification (outside of the eID) is always subject to the nation-state within the framework of eIDAS. This state can decide whether a certain procedure is authorized or not. Some countries, including Germany, have decided to subject identification procedures to a so-called module test and to authorize these modules separately for the Trust Service. This is not the case in Austria, where the entire Trust Service is always authorized. This special treatment in Germany has already led to video identification not being authorized in Germany in the past when it was already authorized in other countries. Spain, for example, also did not authorize video identification for a long time. All procedures, i.e., video identification and auto-identification, are only authorized in Germany for a limited period of time for trust services accredited in Germany. If a provider from abroad offers this identification, e.g., Swisscom Trust Services in Austria, this restriction does not apply. The BNetzA will not extend the expiring time restriction for Autoident for the time being. The reasons are not yet known.
As part of eIDAS 2.0, it plans to replace these national regulations with an EU-wide one. It is expected that the EN 119 461 standard will then become binding for all identification providers. We already have a draft version of this standard adapted for eIDAS 2.0, and so far, there are no indications that the auto-identification procedures will no longer be authorized.
In this respect, Swisscom Trust Services - apart from other signals from Austria - will not make any changes to the use of identification procedures.