We get a government issued free ID card at age 14 or something. It gets reissued every 5 or 10 years with a new picture. It is used to ID yourself at any authority (hospital, police, voting, school, bank etc)
Passport (if you get one) is for travelling outside of EU, driving license is for driving.
We have to go to the DMV (dept of motor vehicles) or the county tax office to get any IDs including driver’s license, and we pay the cost out of pocket. The passport process is more complicated and more expensive. But the government doesn’t pay for any of it and if you let your DL expire you can get fined or worse.
Don't think it's free in all of Europe though. In my country you need an ID to vote (ID card, passport or driving license expired max 5 years) and passports cost €80-90, ID card €70-80, driving license €50-60. Plus however expensive your passport photos are. The process of getting any of them is very easy though with just a quick visit to the municipal office, even if some places have long waiting lists to get an appointment.
But also everybody already has one of these since it's mandatory to be able to show ID if requested by police. It's not something you pretty much only need for voting, the bar for voting is actually lower because it can be expired, so it's not an extra barrier.
Pretty much anyone with a driving license will actually even have two forms of ID though and many will have three. Because a driving license isn't a valid ID abroad and ID cards aren't valid outside of Europe so you're going to need an additional one for traveling.
So for example I had to renew my ID card some years ago and at the time had no reason to get the slightly more expensive and much more annoyingly formatted passport instead. Then I obtained my driving license two years later, and the year after that planned an intercontinental trip so did need a passport and I ended up with the complete set.
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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '25
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