The European Digital Identity Wallet is rapidly moving from policy ambition to production reality, and France is among the first to show what that transition actually looks like on the ground.

This session provides a practitioner-level view of the French national wallet, France Identité, and its implementation within the eIDAS 2.0 framework. Rather than focusing on future-state architecture, the discussion walks through what is live or rolling out today: online authentication, identity proofing, digital credentials, and in-person verification. We will examine the governance and institutional model behind the program and the concrete steps France is taking to drive adoption across both public services and private relying parties.

The session then turns to France’s role in the European Large Scale Pilots. Drawing on experience from the POTENTIAL consortium and current work in the APTITUDE consortium, we highlight what actually worked, what proved harder than expected, and what is changing as the ecosystem shifts from experimentation to deployment. Particular attention is given to advanced travel, mobility, and payment scenarios, as well as to the emerging approach to EUDI Wallet certification and compliance with implementing acts.

There are several hard-won lessons from both national rollouts and cross-border collaborations, including governance trade-offs, interoperability friction points, and coordination challenges that surface when pilots meet production scale.