In the e-book “Scaling Trust: a new era for effortless, secure Digital Transactions”, Namirial CEO Max Pellegrini outlines the upcoming challenges and opportunities facing the EU, between technological innovation and regulatory adjustments, and explains why the pan-European QTSP born from the merger of Namirial and Signaturit is strategic for the European Digital Single Market.
Among the topics covered by Pellegrini is data sovereignty, an aspect defined as fundamental for reliable digitisation.
The legal framework under eIDAS 2.0 – writes Pellegrini in his e-book – reinforces the principle that sensitive identity and sig nature data must remain under European jurisdiction, ensuring protection against extraterritorial laws such as the U.S. CLOUD Act, that allows U.S. authorities, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies to obtain customer data from U.S. provid ers regardless of where it is stored. For European companies, this represents a significant strategic risk when relying on non-EU providers such as DocuSign or Adobe, whose infrastructures are subject to U.S. oversight. At the same time, the forthcoming EU AI Act raises the bar for data governance, transparency, and security, demanding that all actors in the digital ecosystem – including AI-driven onboarding and verification tools – adhere to strict standards. Together, these regulations highlight the importance of pan-European Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSPs) as neutral, compliant guardians of digital identity. By keeping personal and corporate data within EU borders, QTSPs such as Namirial and Signaturit not only guarantee legal certainty and resilience but also strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty, defending its enterprises from dependency on foreign platforms while enabling innovation on trusted foundations.
Trust as the most relevant layer of Europe’s digital economy
Europe has spent decades building and refining its Single Market, progressively removing barriers to the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. Yet, in the digital age, one crucial layer has long been missing: a shared, enforceable, and interoperable infrastructure of trust.
Digital Trust Infrastructure mainly thanks to eIDAS regulation, fills this gap. It provides the legal, technical, and organizational foundations that allow digital interactions to be as reliable, enforceable, and predictable as their physical counterparts. In practical terms, it ensures that when a contract is signed digitally, an identity is verified online, or a document is exchanged electronically, all parties can rely on its validity, across borders, jurisdictions, and time.
This is not merely an IT concern. Digital trust is rapidly becoming core economic infrastructure, comparable in importance to payment systems, transport networks, or energy grids. Without it, Europe’s digital economy would remain fragmented, inefficient, and structurally disadvantaged at global level.
Digital trust infrastructure and the single market
The European Single Market is fundamentally built on mutual recognition. A product lawfully marketed in one Member State can circulate freely in others; professional qualifications are recognized across borders; companies can operate transnationally without re-establishing themselves in every country.
Digital Trust Infrastructure applies this same principle to transactions, identities, and legal acts in digital form.
Through the eIDAS framework, Europe has established common rules for electronic identification and trust services such as electronic signatures, seals, timestamps, certified delivery, and long-term archiving. These services are not simply standardized: when delivered at qualified level, they enjoy automatic legal recognition across all Member States.
This has profound implications for the Single Market:
- A contract signed digitally in one country can be enforced in another without additional formalities.
- A company can onboard customers or partners across borders using trusted digital identification.
- Public administrations can interact digitally with businesses established in other Member States.
In effect, Digital Trust Infrastructure removes one of the last major frictions of cross-border activity: legal uncertainty in digital interactions. It transforms the Single Market from a regulatory construct into an operational digital reality.
Digital trust as a catalyst for cross-border trade beyond the EU
The importance of Europe’s Digital Trust Infrastructure extends well beyond the Union’s borders. Over the past decade, the EU has increasingly acted as a global standard-setter in digital regulation. Just as GDPR has influenced data protection regimes worldwide, the European trust framework is shaping how digital identity and trust services are designed and recognized internationally.
Several non-EU countries and regions have chosen to align, formally or informally, with European principles of digital trust. This alignment creates tangible benefits for European companies engaged in extra-EU trade:
- Digital contracts and signatures based on EU trust services are more readily accepted in partner jurisdictions (Ukraine, Moldovia and some LATAM and Asian countries).
- Cross-border onboarding and identity verification become simpler and faster.
- Legal certainty is improved in international transactions, reducing dispute risk and enforcement costs.
In some cases, alignment is embedded in trade agreements, digital partnerships, or cooperation frameworks. In others, it emerges organically, as countries adopt European-inspired models to gain access to the EU market or to benefit from its regulatory credibility.
The result is a growing zone of trust interoperability, where European companies can operate digitally with greater confidence beyond the Union. For European exporters, manufacturers, and service providers, this translates into faster deal cycles, lower operational overhead, and improved reliability in international trade.
Trust infrastructure and European economic sovereignty
Digital Trust Infrastructure is not only an enabler of efficiency and cross-border trade; it is also a cornerstone of European data sovereignty and strategic autonomy.
At the heart of digital trust lie some of the most sensitive assets of the digital economy: identity data, authentication credentials, cryptographic keys, signatures, timestamps, and transaction evidence. Whoever controls these assets ultimately exerts influence over how economic activity is validated, governed, and, in extreme cases, contested.
For European companies, relying on non-European providers for core trust services can therefore introduce structural risks. Even when data is nominally stored within the EU, providers headquartered outside Europe may still be subject to extraterritorial legislation, conflicting disclosure obligations, or governance models that are not fully aligned with European values and legal safeguards.
This is why the European approach to digital trust, anchored in eIDAS and delivered through Qualified Trust Service Providers rooted in the European legal and industrial ecosystem, is strategically significant. European trust providers operate fully under EU law, are supervised by European authorities, and are bound by strict requirements on data protection, security, auditability, and accountability.
Choosing actors from the European trust value chain is therefore not a defensive or protectionist move. It is a positive industrial strategy. These providers act as a bulwark of European sovereignty, ensuring that critical trust functions remain under European jurisdiction while remaining open and interoperable by design.
Crucially, the European experience demonstrates that innovation and regulation are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, European trust providers have shown that it is possible to innovate precisely because clear rules exist. Harmonized standards, legal certainty, and predictable supervision lower systemic risk and enable sustained investment in new technologies, scalable platforms, and cross-border services.
Over the past years, European trust actors have continuously evolved their offerings – moving from isolated signature services to full Digital Transaction Management platforms, integrating advanced identity verification, cloud-native architectures, and API-based ecosystems, while remaining fully compliant with a demanding regulatory framework.
This combination of regulatory rigor and technological innovation is a distinctive European strength. It allows Europe to compete globally not by lowering standards, but by exporting trust: offering digital interactions that are secure, legally robust, and aligned with fundamental rights.
In this sense, Digital Trust Infrastructure is not only about protecting Europe from external dependencies. It is about empowering European companies with trusted foundations that support growth, resilience, and global competitiveness, on Europe’s own terms.
Looking ahead
Digital Trust Infrastructure is rapidly becoming one of Europe’s most valuable yet least visible assets. It underpins the Single Market, strengthens Europe’s position in global trade, and provides the foundation for future digital growth.
But infrastructure only creates value if it is used. For European companies, the next step is not merely to acknowledge the strategic importance of digital trust, but to actively adopt European-built trust solutions that embody these principles in practice.
Choosing European onboarding, identification, and signing solutions means relying on actors that operate fully under EU law, are supervised by European authorities, and have demonstrated that innovation can thrive within a strong regulatory framework. Solutions such as Namirial Onboarding or Namirial Sign translate Europe’s trust architecture into concrete business capabilities: faster customer onboarding, legally robust digital signatures, cross-border scalability, and long-term compliance by design.
By integrating trusted European solutions into their core processes, companies do more than optimize operations. They actively contribute to strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty, reinforce the Digital Single Market, and position themselves to compete globally on the basis of trust, reliability, and legal certainty.
The message for European businesses is clear: digital trust is no longer a background requirement, it is a strategic choice. Adopting European trust solutions today means building tomorrow’s growth on foundations that are secure, interoperable, and aligned with Europe’s values.
Digital trust is not just the backbone of Europe’s digital future. It is a call to act, now.
