Europe is not a single thing and that statement is not correct.
I'm in Estonia (which is in the EU) and you can either submit a picture online or take the picture on location.
After that I got them done at the local framing shop.
That only confirms the person sitting at the computer is the person in the uploaded photo though.
When you first get a passport you have to have your identity confirmed by a professional person with community standing, teacher, policeman, doctor, someone like that.
They do background checks, it seems quite rigorous.
Once you have a passport/driving license they allow you to reuse a recently verified picture in your application to get the other document.
> do you have that government document/card that also works as a smartcard to create digital signatures?
Yes. All ID and residence cards in Estonia include an embedded certificate pair for login (via PIN1) and sign (via PIN2). > Does that get used typically in interactions with the government
ID Cards, SmartID and MobileID are the only ways to login to any government system or bank. (Some banks also have PIN calculators).Extra info:
Instead of ID cards, on a daily basis most people use SmartID (same as ID cards, but as a mobile app) or MobileID (same, but embedded to the SIM card) for auth operations.
Many computers in the government, hospitals and schools have a keyboard with an ID card slot and users can (or sometimes are required to) use their ID cards to log in.
There's also a free-software DigiDoc4 app available for Desktop and Mobile, which allows users to sign or encrypt any document or folder for free, using one of the 3 authentication methods mentioned above. You can use it to sign contracts like rent or business.
> The application enabling PKI functionalities in Estonian eID Documents is IAS-ECC, a sophisticated but standardised solution conforming to CEN TS 15480-2 (European eID) with extra features.