EU-Enac mess on ID card: in 2026 abroad only with electronic one, but meanwhile you can fly without it

Italy-Europe masquerade on identity card as expatriation document. As a result of the European Regulation number 1157/2019, which strengthens the security standards applicable to ID cards issued by European Union member states to their citizens, as of August 3, 2026, i.e., in a little over a year, regardless of the expiration date shown on the document, the identity card issued on a paper model will cease to be valid for travel abroad and only electronic ID cards will be accepted to travel to another country.

The electronic ID card is equipped with a contactless microchip that contains the holder's personal data, photo and fingerprints, protected by mechanisms that prevent its counterfeiting and improper reading. Instead, the paper ID will continue to be valid, until the expiration date on it, for identity verification within Italy.

It will not be needed, however, if you are traveling by air, within Italy or to Schengen destinations. Enac, in fact, announced the abolition of the need to present ID, along with the boarding pass, at the gate before boarding. The official motivation is that doing so saves time, streamlining and speeding up boarding procedures on domestic and non-Schengen flights that are rarely longer than two hours.

The news will particularly please low-cost airlines, who now operate the majority of domestic and Schengen connections in Italy, according to which embarkation and disembarkation are the two most 'critical' moments of their operations, the ones in which they easily risk losing precious minutes.

But it leaves some reasonable doubt regarding the safety of the new procedure, considering that, in the event that a person travels with hand luggage only and therefore does not check in 'physically' at the airport, he could very well hand over his boarding pass to another person (of the same sex, of course), who could then safely travel in his place, vito that his ID would no longer be checked at any time prior to boarding.

In terms of effectiveness, the measure is also perplexing, since, since you still have to present your boarding pass at the gate, not presenting an ID will save 3-4 seconds of time per passenger, on average.