The national identity card is a non-compulsory identity document

Identity document

An identity document is any document which may be used to verify aspects of a person's personal identity. If issued in the form of a small, mostly standard-sized card, it is usually called an identity card...

 issued in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 by the Swedish Police

Swedish Police Service

The Swedish Police Service is a collection of Government agencies concerned with police matters in Sweden. The Swedish Police Service consists of 28,500 employees of which 39 per cent are women. The staff consists of 20,000 police officers of which 25 per cent are women and 8,500 civilian staff of...

 since October 1, 2005. The card can be used for traveling to and staying in countries that have implemented the Schengen Agreement

Schengen Agreement

The Schengen Agreement is a treaty signed on 14 June 1985 near the town of Schengen in Luxembourg, between five of the ten member states of the European Economic Community. It was supplemented by the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement 5 years later...

 without the need for a passport

Swedish passport

Swedish passports are issued to nationals of Sweden for the purpose of international travel. Besides serving as proof of Swedish citizenship, they facilitate the process of securing assistance from Swedish consular officials abroad or other European Union members in case a Swedish consular is...

, but not to EU countries outside the Schengen area something that violates the EU directive 2004/38/EC

Directive 2004/38/EC on the right to move and reside freely

The Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States...

 chapter II article 4.1. It is only obtainable by Swedish citizens. Citizens of other countries residing in Sweden can get certified identification cards issued by the tax authority.

The card is valid for five years and costs 400 SEK

Swedish krona

The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...

 (about 42 EUR

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

). Applications are filed at police stations which have a passport office. Not so many, around 100.000 Swedes have obtained an official National identity card. This is because almost all people already have another suitable identity document

Identity document

An identity document is any document which may be used to verify aspects of a person's personal identity. If issued in the form of a small, mostly standard-sized card, it is usually called an identity card...

. The driver's license or the tax authority identity card is fully enough inside the Nordic countries, and the passport, although more bulky, is accepted outside the Nordic countries.

The national identity card is equipped with a contact chip prepared for being able to function as an electronic identity card

Electronic identity card

The electronic identity card or EIC is a government-issued document for online and offline identification. Belgium, Italy as well as other countries are currently issuing EICs which will replace conventional identity cards in most European countries in the future...

 (eID) at a later date, and also a contactless RFID chip containing a digital representation of the printed data along with the photograph.

Physical appearance and data contained

The identity card is plastic and rectangular in shape, about 86 × 54 millimetres in size. On the left side is a gold-plated contact chip, on the right side is the photograph of the bearer. On the top edge of the card, the name of Sweden available in three languages, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (SVERIGE SWEDEN SUÈDE), below which the name of the card is available in the same three languages (Nationellt identitetskort/National identity card/Carte nationale d'identité), followed on the right by the biometric passport

Biometric passport

A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or ePassport, is a combined paper and electronic passport that contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers...

 symbol () and the nationality of the bearer in Swedish and a country code (SVENSK/SWE).

Printed data

The descriptions of the fields are printed in Swedish and English.

• Card No.
• Personal Id. No.
  Personal identity number (Sweden)
  The personal identity number is the Swedish national identification number. When it was introduced in 1947 it was probably the first of its kind covering the total resident population of a country...
  
  
• Holder's signature
• Height
• Date of birth
• Surname
• Given names
• Authority
• Date of issue
• Date of expiry

On the back side of the card a machine readable zone is found in the bottom half.

Data on the RFID chip

the data on the RFID chip contains no biometric

Biometrics

Biometrics As Jain & Ross point out, "the term biometric authentication is perhaps more appropriate than biometrics since the latter has been historically used in the field of statistics to refer to the analysis of biological data [36]" . consists of methods...

 data. The data it contains is the following:

• The card's printed data in a digital format
• The photograph in a JPEG
  JPEG
  In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
  
  format
• A digital key to verify the that the data contained is authentic and hasn't been tampered with

The contents of the RFID chip cannot be accessed without using the codes found in the machine readable zone on the back side.