eIDAS 2.0 was proposed under the assumption that all EU citizens would be required to hold a hardware trust anchor for their electronic identity. However, a proposal to introduce such an obligatory hardware was struck down in June 2024 and an adapted version could not guarantee the provisioning of eID cards before 2031.

This has left the implementation of eIDAS 2.0 in disarray. While real challenges exist which are causing economic harm to entire sectors, politicians remain focused on social media use-cases. Meanwhile, industry self-regulation is not capable of producing authenticators of sufficiently robust fundamental rights protections. Hardware anchored solutions are beneficial to industries in some member states, while software anchored solutions leave more space for industries in others.

We will present the arising problems with regards to fundamental rights, national security and the challenge to find solutions for the time until 2031. We will focus on the European situation, while not ignoring the impact of foreign influencers like Mark Zuckerberg and Ashton Kuchner, or the impact of the recent Australian social media ban for children on the attention span of European legislators.