From Infrastructure to Power

Up to this point, much of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) conversation has been framed in technical and architectural terms. The focus has been on standards, interoperability, cryptography and governance models. These questions matter, but they only tell part of the story.

This article concludes an ongoing TQS series exploring how the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet is moving from regulation into real national infrastructure. Rather than treating EUDI as a single policy initiative, the series examines how different countries are translating the framework into operational systems — and what those design choices reveal about Europe’s future trust architecture.

In France, Spain and Italy, EUDI enters a different terrain. Here, digital identity stops being a clean infrastructure project and becomes entangled with national politics, institutional power and economic interests. The wallet is no longer just a system to be designed. It is an asset to be controlled.

This is the point at which digital identity becomes visibly political.

France: The State as Platform

France approaches digital identity with a deeply ingrained belief in the central role of the state. French digital governance has long been shaped by the idea that strategic infrastructure should be sovereign, nationally anchored and supported by domestic industrial champions.

FranceConnect, the country’s existing identity federation, already reflects this mindset. It is not merely a login service. It is an extension of the state’s role as the primary organiser of digital trust. The private sector participates, but within a framework defined and orchestrated by public institutions.

EUDI fits naturally into this logic. Rather than disrupting existing structures, it reinforces them. The wallet becomes another layer in a broader national platform strategy, aligned with players such as Thales, Idemia and La Poste, and embedded into a state-led vision of digital sovereignty.

In this model, identity is not just infrastructure. It is an expression of national capability. The question is not whether the state should control digital identity, but how effectively it can do so while still appearing European.

Spain: Identity in a Fragmented State

Spain presents a very different challenge. The country operates under a strong central government, but with significant autonomy delegated to regions that possess their own political identities, administrative systems and levels of digital maturity.

Digital identity in Spain therefore exists in a permanently negotiated space. National policy must coexist with regional realities. EUDI cannot simply be rolled out uniformly, because the institutional landscape it enters is anything but uniform.

Some regions are digitally advanced, with well-integrated public services and strong citizen engagement. Others remain dependent on slower, more fragmented systems. Public trust varies not only by sector, but by geography.

In this context, EUDI becomes less a national infrastructure project and more a coordination exercise. The technical challenge is manageable. The political challenge is not. Identity systems must function across multiple layers of authority without reinforcing regional tensions or undermining local legitimacy.

Spain shows that digital identity cannot be abstracted from territorial politics. Trust is not only a matter of cryptography. It is a matter of belonging.

Italy: The Incumbent Ecosystem

Italy offers perhaps the most complex identity landscape of the three. Unlike France or Spain, Italy already operates multiple national identity systems, including SPID and the electronic identity card (CIE), both of which involve dense networks of public and private actors.

Banks, telecom operators, Poste Italiane and certified identity providers all play active roles. Identity in Italy is not a single system. It is an ecosystem.

This creates a paradox for EUDI. On one hand, Italy is well positioned for European interoperability because digital identity is already embedded into commercial and public life. On the other hand, control is highly distributed. No single institution fully owns the trust layer.

EUDI enters this environment not as a replacement, but as another negotiation. Existing providers will seek to maintain relevance. New actors will seek to insert themselves. The state will attempt to assert coordination without dismantling what already functions.

Italy demonstrates what happens when identity becomes economically valuable. Once multiple stakeholders depend on it, sovereignty becomes shared, not imposed.

When Identity Becomes Power

Taken together, France, Spain and Italy reveal something fundamental about the European digital identity project.

EUDI is not just about enabling citizens to prove who they are. It is about deciding who controls the infrastructure through which that proof is mediated. This is not a purely technical question. It is a question of power, legitimacy and institutional authority.

In France, power is centralised and openly political. In Spain, it is fragmented and territorially sensitive. In Italy, it is negotiated within a crowded marketplace of incumbents.

Each produces a different version of digital identity. All operate under the same European framework. None interpret it in the same way.

The TQS Takeaway

Germany shows how to engineer trust. The Nordics show how to scale it.
The Baltics show how to experiment with it. But France, Spain and Italy show what happens when trust becomes power.

This is where EUDI stops being a design problem and becomes a political economy problem. Where cryptographic architectures collide with national institutions, and where digital identity reveals itself not as neutral infrastructure, but as a strategic asset.

In Southern Europe, EUDI will succeed or fail less on the elegance of its technology than on the balance of forces that shape its control. Because once identity becomes valuable, the real question is no longer how it works.

It is who owns it.