What it would take for a wallet to cross the border
A hunter from Norway taking her rifle and her dog to an elk hunt in Sweden meets most of what a wallet has to handle: an identity, permits from public bodies, an invitation from a private one, documents about an animal and a rifle, and checks at a border and in a forest without network. The EU’s rules say how documents get into a wallet and how they are shown and checked. What they leave open is for the countries and their agencies to agree.
New to wallets? How a wallet works
What the trip shows
The wallet is ready before the documents are.
The EU’s rules settle the identity in the wallet, how documents reach it, and how a checker knows who issued them. What a hunter exam, a firearms pass or a pet passport is in a wallet takes a rulebook for each kind of document, and we found none for hunting, firearms or pets.
On the trip: Once Norway names who issues the identity in its wallet, a checker anywhere can verify Kari’s. Nothing tells the Swedish hunt leader how to read her hunter exam.
More on this: A public body can issue from its register, but we found no shared rulebook for hunting.A wallet can’t hold an ambiguity.
As we see it, a paper document can be read in two ways by two countries, and it still works. A credential is read by a machine, by a rulebook both sides follow, so making one asks the countries, and their agencies, to agree on what it means. That agreement would help, wallet or not.
On the trip: Two Swedish agencies give different answers on declaring a dog, and some organisations we asked doubted the firearms pass that Swedish law accepts.
More on this: Two agencies give different answers on declaring a dog.Face to face is the blind spot.
The duties to accept a wallet are written for online services. Nothing we found obliges a police officer, a customs officer or a hunt leader to accept one in person, or to have a device that can read one. As we read it, until each sector’s own rules say otherwise, the paper document comes along.
On the trip: Kari carries her paper documents as well as her phone.
More on this: No rule we found makes anyone accept your phone in a check made face to face.The wallet won’t report that the rifle is home.
A wallet must not tell the issuer when a document is used. That protects the holder, and it also means the wallet is no channel for an authority to follow up: as we read it, the two countries would not learn from it that the rifle is home. Where authorities need to know, they have to tell each other.
On the trip: Home again, Swedish customs reminds Kari every day until she deregisters the rifle herself. With her firearms pass, she never registered it with Norwegian customs at all.
More on this: A wallet must not tell the issuer when a document is used.The wallet answers questions. It doesn’t make declarations.
A wallet shows a document when an organisation asks for it. A declaration goes the other way, from the traveller to the authority, and the rules for the wallet that we read say nothing about it.
On the trip: More than 10 kg of meat from the hunt is declared at customs, and Kari’s rifle is notified on Swedish customs’ website: both beside the wallet.
More on this: The wallet rules we read say nothing about declaring goods.Checks get easier: more of them, or fewer stops?
A check from a wallet can work without network, and an organisation may ask only for what it has registered. As we see it, a country could use that to check more often, or to stop the traveller less, and which it wants is a choice to make on purpose.
On the trip: With a European firearms pass, Kari already leaves Norway without stopping at a customs post. A spot check in Sweden later goes by a number in an e-mail.
More on this: A spot check goes by a number in an e-mail; the register behind it is a question for Swedish customs.Many documents are about animals and things, not people.
What crosses a border is often a dog with a chip or a rifle, and their documents are added to over time, by different hands, in different countries. As we read the rules for the wallet, a second issuer can’t add to a document another issued.
On the trip: As we read the rules, the Swedish vet can’t add the tapeworm treatment to Tass’s pet passport: she would have to issue a document of her own.
More on this: As we read the rules, a second vet can’t add to a document the first vet issued.Offline, a check trusts what it knew when it was last online.
A check without network can work: the checker’s device verifies the document with what it fetched before. What it can’t know is what has changed since it last fetched the issuer’s list of revoked documents. Each issuer sets how long that list is valid, and we found no rule that limits it; with an outdated list, accepting the document is left to the checker’s own judgement of the risk.
On the trip: In the forest, a licence revoked yesterday may still pass.
More on this: Without network, a revoked licence may go unnoticed.
What must be decided
- Whether a credential shown from a wallet meets each sector’s duty to carry the document, in a check made in person.Who: The governments of both countries, sector by sector, and the EU where its law sets the document, as for the European firearms pass.
- Who issues the identity in the Norwegian wallet, and when the EU’s rules on accepting it apply in Norway.Who: The Norwegian government, and for when, the EEA agreement.
- Who writes the rulebooks for hunting, firearms and pet credentials, and who owns them.Who: The agencies that answer for each document, and the EU for the firearms pass and the pet passport.
- How old a list of revoked documents a check in the field may rely on.Who: The issuers, who set how long their lists are valid, and the checkers, who decide what to accept with an outdated one.
- How the authorities of both countries learn that a rifle is home, when the wallet won’t tell them.Who: Customs and the police of both countries.
What is unclear
- Whether a dog from Norway must be declared in Sweden: two Swedish agencies answer differently.
- Whether everyone who checks at the border knows that the European firearms pass is enough: Swedish law and Swedish customs say it is, but some organisations we asked weren’t sure.
- Which register a customs officer looks a firearms notification up in: a question for Swedish customs, as no published source says.
- What a Swedish gun shop must see before it sells ammunition.
- Which clock a time window, such as the dog’s tapeworm treatment, is checked against.
- What the wallet shows when the organisation that provides a document isn’t the body that answers for it by law.
What it opens
- If the EU’s rules come to apply in Norway, the same wallet could serve both countries’ checks at one border.
- An organisation may ask only for what it registered, and the wallet warns if it asks for more.
- Swedish and Norwegian customs could each see only their part of a pet passport.
- A check can work in the forest, without network.
- A receipt signed by Swedish customs could be verified on the spot in a spot check.
What could be done next
Our proposals, the first the one we would start with.
A Nordic rulebook for hunting credentials
The hunter, the hunting fee, the exam, the shooting test for each rifle and the tracking dog, defined once, so that Norway and Sweden can read each other’s credentials. Drafted by the agencies that answer for them, with the project’s partners, as the project has done for another credential; owned by whoever the countries choose; and registered in the EU’s catalogue of schemes, where other countries and wallets can find it.
Who: Landbruksdirektoratet and Naturvårdsverket, with the project’s partners.
One firearms notification for both countries
Customs and the police in Norway and Sweden agree on one notification of a hunter’s firearms that all of them rely on, with a receipt from Swedish customs that the hunter can show in any spot check.
Who: Tullverket, Tolletaten, Polisen and Politiet.
The agencies say the same
Their pages on declaring a dog coming from Norway, and what those who check at the border know about which document brings a rifle into Sweden. It needs no technology, and a credential can’t be built on a rule that reads two ways.
Who: Tullverket and Jordbruksverket, for the dog; the customs and police of both countries, for the rifle.
The duty to carry, in each sector’s rules
Say, for firearms, hunting and pets, whether a credential shown from a wallet meets the duty to carry the document.
Who: The ministries responsible in both countries.
The Nordic case in the EU’s work
Ask for the digital European firearms pass to be a wallet credential in the Commission’s evaluation of the Firearms Directive, and bring travel between Norway and Sweden into its assessment of a digital pet passport.
Who: The governments of both countries.
Fresh enough, and a reader in every hand
Decide how old a list of revoked documents a check in the field may use, and give the people who check in the field a device that reads a wallet at close range.
Who: The issuers, and the agencies that check in the field.
The trip, topic by topic
Who vouches for what
Someone signs every document. Who, and why should a checker in another country believe them?
What may be asked, and what is kept
A checker asks your wallet for named details. How much may it ask, and what does it keep?
In person, and without network
A hunt is checked face to face, in the forest and at the border. Does a wallet still work there?
Two countries, one trip
One trip crosses two countries’ rules. Do they fit together?