Bundestag passes Germany's wallet law as cabinet plans age checks through d-you

Germany's parliament has cleared the way for the country's European digital identity (EUDI) wallet. On 15 October 2026 the Bundestag adopted the Digital Identities Act (Digitale Identitätengesetz) with the votes of the governing CDU/CSU and SPD, against the opposition AfD, Greens and Left. The wallet, called d-you, is due to start on 2 January 2027, the Bundestag says. IQGov reported the name and launch date on 19 September.

The act supplements the rules of the European Union's amended eIDAS Regulation, according to the Bundestag. At a public hearing of the committee on digital affairs and state modernisation on 6 October 2026, Andreas Hartl, a senior official at the office of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, welcomed the fact that the act creates a legal basis for the first version of the wallet, which will not yet have every function the eIDAS Regulation requires.

What changed in committee

The committee on digital affairs and state modernisation amended the draft before the vote. Under the changes, users are to be able to refuse the inclusion of their biometric photo in their digital identity data, and a central federal citizen account (Bürgerkonto) is to remain permanently available as a voluntary way into online public services, the Bundestag reports.

Other amendments give more weight to the digital sovereignty of Germany and the EU in procurement, cut the deadline for providing attribute attestations from 24 to 12 months, ease the exchange of biometric data between passport and identity card authorities, and allow the online ID function to be used from the age of 13, according to the same report.

The plenary also adopted a resolution, with the coalition for and the opposition against, asking the government to make the pseudonym function available at launch or, if not, soon afterwards. The coalition groups say the function is mandatory to comply with EU law, the Bundestag writes.

In its earlier opinion on the draft, the Bundesrat, the chamber of the federal states, asked that the decision on how the wallet is provided be made by regulation with its consent. The government held that the responsible federal ministry should decide, the Bundestag report says. The report does not say when the act takes effect, and it does not describe any further step in the Bundesrat.

Age checks through the wallet

On 14 October 2026, the day before the vote, the federal government adopted key points (Eckpunkte) for protecting children and young people in media, presented by Karin Prien, the federal minister for education and family, the family ministry announced. The key points are a plan, not a law. They follow the final report of the expert commission on child and youth protection in the digital world, which ended its work on 11 September 2026. The ministry calls the commission's 56 recommendations a central basis.

In negotiations on the EU KIDS Act, the government will press for children under 13 to have, in principle, no access to social networks. As long as no minimum age is set at European level, it wants to create a national transitional rule, with exceptions for services shown to be suitable for children. Graduated usage restrictions are foreseen for young people aged 13 to 18, and algorithmic recommendation systems should be switched off by default, the ministry says.

The link to the wallet is explicit. From 2027, the government will use d-you, its implementation of the EUDI wallet, to offer a reliable way to verify age to digital services, according to the ministry. Biometric Update wrote on 19 October that the wallet "will enable tokenized reusable age verification based on the EU blueprint", and that the under-13 rule covers platforms that are not "demonstrably child-friendly".

The next steps, according to the ministry, are the KIDS Act negotiations, which the family ministry leads for Germany, a structured exchange with the federal states and a review of the commission's other recommendations. The release does not say when the national transitional rule would be drafted or how the graduated limits for teenagers would work. IQGov has also reported on the United Kingdom's social media age rules.