"The increase of the identity theft phenomenon across Europe and its related human and economical impacts is a major concern for all M.S. Several EU initiatives are ongoing to try to curb this concern. Today’s identity can take various forms, either in the “real” world, as a primary identity delivered by a M.S. (passport, ID card, driving license...) but more and more in the “2.0” world (secondary identity for banking, administration, professional and commercial activities...). Similarly identity theft can take various forms, from stealing citizens' paper documents, or simply by using digital means. Privacy is at the center of all concerns, as any solution must protect citizen’s identity and privacy, whilst not being worse than the problem itself.The major objective of EKSISTENZ is to protect EU citizens’ identities from all current threats but also to foresee what the future threats would be. The project will study in deep the identity theft phenomenon in Europe, revealing the flaws in the different “paper-based” procedures but also in the new dematerialized processes, assess the threat for the citizen and consequently, will develop technological components, backward compatible with different existing M.S. frameworks. EKSISTENZ will also focus on an “identity-as-a-service” approach, to allow M.S. interoperability, leading to a more global system to provide secure and strong identity for all M.S.To achieve this, the consortium will bring together different types of users involved in the identity chain (authorities, industrials, stakeholders, businesses), specialized technology providers and of course, data protection and privacy experts. EKSISTENZ will recommend updates to EU regulations in order to clearly inform, protect, propose responses and increase its resilience following an attempt. Knowing this, identity theft will become, if not impossible, much harder to carry out."