The regulation (EU) No 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, which is commonly known as “eIDAS-Regulation” was introduced in 2014 and has been fully in force since 1st July 2016. In September 2018 a first milestone was reached with the EU-wide recognition of notified eID-schemes and the amendment of the eIDAS-Regulation by the regulation (EU) 2024/1183 in April 2024 constituted an important milestone, because it introduced the “European Digital Identity Wallets” (EUDIW), which are expected to be available in all EU Member States by the end of 2026.

Against this background, leading European associations, projects and expert organisations in the sector of eID and trust joined forces and established the non-profit go.eIDAS e.V., which was officially registered as association according to German law on the 20th of February 2020. First steps and initial focus areal of this initiative comprise the creation and maintenance of localisable and extensible eIDAS-related information material, the provision of local eIDAS-related webinars, the creation and maintenance of eIDAS-related Open Source software and contributions to pertinent standardisation bodies around the globe. An important current activity within the go.eIDAS community is the EU Business Wallet Initiative, which aims at shaping and supporting the forthcoming “European Business Wallets” (EUBW), which are envisioned to complement the EUDIW, by preparing technical documents, which are planned to be provided as input for suitable standardisation bodies in order to form the basis for creating corresponding reference implementations and the utilisation in a variety of use cases.

go.eIDAS is an open initiative, which welcomes all interested organisations and individual people which are committed to the aforementioned goals. The go.eIDAS association invites all stakeholders within the eIDAS-Ecosystem, such as application providers, eID-related stakeholders, trust service providers, wallet providers, conformity assessment bodies, other service providers, regulatory authorities and other public sector bodies, publicly funded projects and initiatives, academic institutions and standard development organisations, whereas commercial organisations shall demonstrate reasonable pro bono aspects related to their participation.

The main goals of the go.eIDAS initiative may be summarised as follows:

• Raise awareness for eIDAS in Europe and beyond
• Point out the benefits of eIDAS within application services and illustrate the huge trade opportunity for the EU related to pushing the eIDAS model and framework internationally
• Demonstrate the ease of use of eID and trust services
• Support the integration of eID, trust services and wallets into application services, with a special focus on small and medium enterprises in a variety of cross-sector use cases as well as selected sectors, such as finance, industry, logistics, mobility, health, government, education, social security and justice and the related online-platforms
• Promote the use and uptake of user-centric solutions for eIDAS in mobile environments
• Support the development of the eIDAS-Ecosystem and the internal European market and trustworthy global transactions around the world
• Promote security, usability and interoperability among eIDAS-related solution components
• Support the creation of a sustainable network of eIDAS stakeholders in Europe and beyond

The go.eIDAS initiative is an open initiative for interested organisations and individual persons which are committed to the mentioned goals.

go.eIDAS welcomes all stakeholders within the eIDAS-ecosystem, such as

• Application providers
• eID-related stakeholders
• trust service providers
• conformity assessment bodies
• regulatory authorities and other public sector bodies
• publicly funded projects and initiatives
• academic institutions
• standard development organisations

whereas commercial organisations shall demonstrate reasonable pro bono aspects related to their participation.