What is ESSPASS?

The European Social Security Pass (ESSPASS) is exploring ways to facilitate the exercise of citizens’ social security rights across borders by simplifying the interactions with competent institutions and other actors. It focuses on digitalising the processes for the request and issuance of Portable Documents and the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), introducing real-time mechanisms for the cross-border verification of the social security entitlements of mobile citizens and workers. It uses the EBSI’s framework for Verifiable Credentials including the EBSI ledger to make available information about trusted issuers of entitlement documents.

In addition to EBSI, ESSPASS leverages on existing EU and national digital initiatives, among others, the proposed European Digital Identity (EUDI) framework and on the EU ‘Single Digital Gateway’ Regulation. This Regulation requires that by the end of 2023, in the field of social security coordination, citizens are able to request and obtain electronically : the Portable Document A1 (PDA1), the EHIC, and a summary of pension decisions (PDP1). The first phase of ESSPASS focused on the cross-border digital verification of the PDA1.

What are the benefits?

1.Easier exercise of social security rights thanks to a more efficient proof and verification of citizen’s entitlements.

2.Facilitation of the verification process to all actors involved without the need to call upon a central entity to verify the validity and authenticity.

3.The early identification and prevention of fraudulent activities and reduced risk of fraud and errors, e.g. clerical errors, falsification of documents.

3 new Wallets will be soon ready to be used with ESSPASS

Three new digital wallets will soon be conformant to EBSI's specifications and will allow you to store, verify and share Social Security credentials, such as PDA1, across Europe.

• CorpoSign DID
• Data Wallet by iGrant.io
• WalliD