Revoking a digital EU power of attorney

Revocation follows the same national-law path as the grant: verified by courts, notaries or other competent authorities, compatible with the EUDI wallet, optionally filed with a register. What the Directive does not create is a Union-wide, real-time way for a relying party to learn that an instrument was revoked this morning. That is the biggest open question in the whole regime.

Who this page is for

Companies that need to cut off an authorisation cleanly, relying parties deciding how much to trust a presented instrument, and engineers designing the check that runs at the moment of reliance.

What the law says

Revocation is a national-law act with mandatory verification. The instrument "shall be drawn up, amended or revoked in accordance with national requirements", which must at least include verification by courts, notaries or other competent authorities of the identity, legal capacity and authority to represent of the person revoking [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(1), second subpara.]. The same three checks as at the grant. Revocation is not a click in an app; it is a verified legal act.

Revocation must be wallet-compatible. Member States must ensure that the instrument's "granting, amendment or revocation is compatible for use with the European Digital Identity Wallet" [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(1), third subpara.]. The lifecycle, not just the issuance, has to work in wallet terms.

Filing is optional, Member State by Member State. A Member State "may require that the digital EU power of attorney, any amendment to it, and any revocation of it, is to be filed with a register", with access fees capped at administrative cost [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(3)]. The recitals leave the choice of register — business register or another under national law — to the Member State [Directive (EU) 2025/25, recital 28].

If the instrument is a qualified attestation, revocation is final. Where the power of attorney is delivered as a qualified electronic attestation of attributes, a revoked attestation "shall lose its validity from the moment of its revocation and its status shall not in any circumstances be reverted" [Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 (eIDAS 2), Art. 45d(4) of Reg. 910/2014 as inserted]. There is no un-revoking. Restoring authority means granting a new instrument.

What the law does not say

How a relying party finds out. Article 16c(2) obliges acceptance of the instrument as evidence of authority "as specified in the document" [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(2)]. A document, once issued, does not know it has been revoked. The Directive answers this only partly:

• Filing with a register makes revocation discoverable, but filing is optional per Member State, so discoverability will vary across 27 legal systems.
• The technical specifications in the Article 24(2)(e) implementing act, and the wallet's attestation machinery, could carry revocation status. As of this page's last verification there is no adopted template act, so how status-checking will actually work is unknown.

This matters because a paper power of attorney is checked once, by a human, on presentation day. A digital instrument presented to an online procedure can and should be checked at each reliance, if the means to do so exist. Whether they will, per Member State, is what the transposition table tracks.

What you can already plan around

1. Revocation goes through the same institutional path as granting. If your national transposition routes granting through a notary, expect revocation to go through one too.
2. In filing Member States, the register is the place to check. Fees for access are capped at administrative cost [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(3)].
3. Tight scope reduces the need to revoke. The instrument is accepted only "as specified in the document", so a tightly scoped, short-lived instrument needs revoking less often than a broad one. The template's mandatory "scope of representation" field [Directive (EU) 2025/25, Art. 16c(4)] is where you control this.

Common confusions

"Deleting it from the wallet revokes it." No. Revocation is a verified national-law act. Removing a credential from a device is housekeeping.

"Revocation takes effect when the relying party learns of it." The qualified-attestation rule says validity is lost "from the moment of its revocation" [Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 (eIDAS 2), Art. 45d(4)]. What happens to a relying party who reasonably relied before learning of it is a national-law and case-law question the instruments do not answer.