Estonian ID card

The Estonian identity card (Estonian: ID-kaart) is a mandatory identity document for citizens of Estonia. In addition to regular identification of a person, an ID-card can also be used for establishing one's identity in electronic environment and for giving one's digital signature. Within the European Union and EFTA (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) and other countries and territories (Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Monaco, Montenegro, Northern Cyprus, San Marino, Serbia, Vatican City), the Estonian ID Card can be used by the citizens of Estonia as a travel document.

The mandatory identity document of a citizen of the European Union is also an identity card, also named as ID card. By means of the Estonian ID Card that has been issued to the citizen of the European Union, the Estonian border can be crossed, but Estonian Police and Border Guard Board cannot guarantee that other Member States would accept it as travel document .

In practice a German citizen living in Estonia used the Estonian ID card within the EU flying from Tallinn Airport and Riga Airport to Germany. Her returned also from German Airport to Riga Airport. Beside the travels with airplanes the German citizen used the Estonian ID Card between Tallinn and Helsinki or Stockholm at ferries. Finally the Estonian ID card confirmed the identity of the German citizen and has been accepted by travel organisations.

EU nationals should present an ID card instead of an passport to PROVE THE IDENTITY in case of stopping by police or boarding a plane. The question should be, whether a Spanish national MUST travel with the spanish ID card or an Italian national MUST travel with the italian ID card. Finally a German male could travel with an Estonian ID Card for example to Spain only to prove the identity in case of control. Otherwise a German female could travel with an Estonian ID Card to Italy only to prove the identity in case of control. At both ID cards the citizenship (Estonian: kodakondsus) are embedded. For German citizen it is written DEU (= Deutschland).

In addition to regular identification of a person, an ID-card can also be used for establishing one's identity in electronic environment and for giving one's digital signature. With the Estonian ID-card the citizen will receive personal @eesti.ee e-mail address, which is used by the state to send important information. In order to use the @eesti.ee e-mail address, the citizen have to forward it to his personal e-mail address using the State Portal eesti.ee.

The card's chip stores digitised data about the authorised user, most importantly: the user's full name, gender, national identification number, and cryptographic keys and public key certificates.

...
Wikipedia