Digital Trust: why May 21 deserves a celebration
May 21, 2026: a date to circle in red.
Not to celebrate the ninety-ninth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s first non-stop transatlantic flight…
But for another achievement: certainly less romantic and symbolic, but equally challenging and demanding. At least for those who work in qualified trust services, like us at Intesi Group.
Here’s why.
From eIDAS to eIDAS 2.0
It was 2014 when the eIDAS Regulation was officially introduced, and its provisions have governed trust services at the European level.
It was a landmark turning point, but over the years – in a world that has kept moving at an unprecedented pace – it began to show some cracks: inconsistent national rules, fragmented technical standards, varying security levels from one member state to another, and so on.
That is why, two years ago, eIDAS 2.0 entered into force: not just a new version of the regulation, but a change with a revolutionary impact on industry players – and, in the near future, on the lives of businesses and citizens alike.
Today’s Milestone
But why is May 21, 2026 so significant?
Because it marks one of the last and most important deadlines set by the Implementing Acts – which are essential for the implementation of the new Regulation. Today, in fact, the deadline for compliance with the technical standards established for advanced electronic signatures and seals, and for the remote management of qualified devices (QSCD/HSM), comes into effect.
For us at Intesi Group, as for other European Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSPs), this is the culmination of a long and intensive compliance journey that defined our entire year 2025.
Significant technical, organisational and certification investments were required, as well as the invaluable expertise of our professionals, which allowed us to be perfectly aligned with an unprecedented landscape dramatically transformed by the EU’s sweeping rewrite of the rules.
In Brief: What Changes
Here are the main changes: structured openness to remote identification, the introduction of common EU technical standards, and significantly stricter security requirements for verifying user identities and attributes.
In practice, intensive work has been done both to bring HSM (Hardware Security Module) devices — used for creating remote signatures and seals — into compliance with the new technical specifications, and to align remote identity verification with the new ETSI standards.
The fragmented and disjointed puzzle will gradually give way to an increasingly harmonious picture, thanks to an adequate and binding framework for the entire European Union.
The Impact on Users
Those who use digital signature services — businesses, professionals, and citizens — will find themselves interacting with more structured identification processes and uniform verification standards across the EU. In particular, for many organisations this will mean updating workflows, integrating new verification steps, and revising systems. It is no small task, but it is undoubtedly rewarding: it is an opportunity to build more robust, more secure, and more recognisable processes on a European scale.
The race continues and, in this light, May 21 is not a finish line — rather, it is a new starting block.
Towards the European Wallet
Today’s deadline cannot be read without keeping an eye on the most ambitious goal of the coming months: by the end of 2026, every member state must make available at least one EUDI Wallet — the European digital identity wallet that, as is well known, will allow citizens to manage their identity and qualified attributes in a secure, portable, and fully recognised manner across the entire European Union. For example: driving licence, educational qualifications, health card, and much more…
There is a close connection between the EUDI Wallet and the technical standards coming into force today: without a robust and homogeneous infrastructure of qualified signatures and identity proofing, the Wallet can be neither secure nor truly interoperable across member states.
In essence, today marks the birth of the technological foundation upon which tomorrow’s European digital identity will rest.
Intesi Group is ready!
Yes, we say it with pride: we got ahead of this deadline. And we did not do it out of obligation, but out of vision. We believe, in fact, that digital trust is not built at the last minute. Today, we are therefore fully compliant with the new eIDAS 2.0 requirements and ready to support our clients in every necessary adaptation.
In short, today — May 21 — we deserve a moment to breathe. But, starting tomorrow, we will resume the path we have always walked: the one towards the future.