Fun fact: when my country transitioned to a new public authentication app, the default way was to use your passport to register. My passport was expired, though, so I had to show up in person with my birth certificate and social security card equivalent.
To get my birth certificate, I had to show up at the local office with, you guessed it, my passport.
Lucky for me that they accepted it in spite of being expired (none of the pertinent information such as my face, name and birth date had expired, after all), or I would probably be trapped in the loop to this day, years later.
Ohh, that reminds me of when I moved to Sweden. Their digital ID, bankID, is as the name suggests issued by your bank, not the government, even though it is used for all official authentication. And that includes… you guessed it, creating a bank account. So that was a real chicken and egg situation where it seemed impossible to be properly integrated into the Swedish system.
Hi neighbor! waves across Øresund
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Scandinavian style government (unlike the current governments of both of our countries, it would seem) in general, but sometimes the bureaucracy can get a little bit ridiculous 😂
I think you have the situation everywhere. At one time in France they ask you for your bank account details to see that you have funds so that they give an ID. But the bank will refuse to open you an account without an ID. So it will depend on the agent handling your request.
Reminds me of the first days of BankID here in Norway. To get my new BankID to work with my current bank, I had to log in with, you guessed it, a BankID allready configured to my bank. Took a few weeks talking to the bank, showing up in person and queueing with others with the same problem before the bank realized they’ve made a mistake somewhere
Same happened when the code thingy the bank sent me ran out of batteries. I went to the bank and asked for a new one. Not possible, they said. I had to contact the main branch, and they would send me new one. It would only take one week or so. I had to pay a bill that day, and asked if I could open it to replace the batteries since there was visible screw with ordinary heads. They said that was illegal and hacking, and that I must replace it. On my way home I opened it, and bought the exact same batteries from a shop, and replaced them. Worked perfectly!
Why do y’all in Europe have your bank manage your legal ID? Seems a bit backwards
I guess it was a system already in place. There’s been suggestions to have different system where I live but mostly the current system seems fine to most so it hasn’t been changed. Some form of EU wide digital ID app or something might be nice. Or it could be an annoying pain, you never know how those turn out.
It seems like most countries have some variation of this issue. When I had to apply for government assistance here in Australia, there was a whole debacle because as I discovered, I don’t actually have a middle name but rather 2 first names because my birth information was filled in incorrectly. So that caused issues because all 3 of the IDs they demanded listed different information. My student ID didn’t list my second name at all, my learner driver permit initialised it, and my birth certificate listed it in full.
Then my government service account messed things up too, because certain services have my 2nd name listed as either a middle name, or just a second first name so they decided that because I have different government services linked in “different names” I must be committing fraud
This is why I currently have no proper ID.
I have my birth certificate and my public healthcare card, and a not expired but no longer fully accepted proof of age card that previously counted as full ID but no longer does, but without it I dont have enough ID to get the new form of ID the government introduced in place of the old one I have.
It’s enough to prove who I am at a liquor store or chemist, day to day, but I can’t get a passport until I sort it out.
Actual Proof of Age Cards are still around, and that’s what I need to get (but I don’t have anything with my current address on it, other than the lease agreement, so it’s going to take a few steps over red tape to get proper ID, and I am not mentally healthy enough to push that process along right now)
I had a keypass, which they stopped in 2022. I only found out about proof of age cards last year, when I tried to get into an RSL and the bouncer asked if I had anything else because they’re phasing out keypass.
I know it’s stupid and ignorance isn’t an excuse, but as a teenager I was told to get a keypass because “that’s the ID you get when you don’t have a licence” so I got a keypass, and for the next 15 years I didn’t run into a single issue with not having the right ID. No one I worked with ever questioned why that’s the only ID I had, so I never really stopped to research the specifics. I didn’t know that keypass and “proof of age card” were different, I thought keypass was a proof of age card, just different names for it.
