[kome]

"I don't think most EU citizens use services from other EU countries than their own."

yes, but it's so common to expatriate nowadays, also for short periods. so it would be nice to have a digital ID thing to deal with different administrative stuff, in different countries...

[ipatec]

only 17/448 (~4%) million EU citizens work in other country than their birth one. expatriating is not as common as you'd think living in a major EU city.

[rpadovani]

13M work, 17.9M live. [0]

However, ~1M goes back every year, so the affected people are more than the ones _currently_ living abroad.

Moreover, there are services that also intra-EU tourists can benefit from: - buying products >18 y.o. at automatic machines - simplifying buying drugs at pharmacies (we have EHIC, but it doesn't cover not-urgent care) - having fast track at airports without having an EU passport (in many countries people have an ID but not a passport) - easier lookup for police during random checks

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pub...

[izacus]

Did you really just use the word "only" in relation to 17 million people? Are issues 17 million persons somehow beneath your notice just because they're a smaller part of some arbitrary selected whole?

[kalleboo]

If you reduce that fraction it's close to 1/25. I know more than 25 people, and indeed I know several EU citizens who work in a different EU country.

[benhurmarcel]

4% of the population is a massive amount of people