Italy started issuing smart cards around 2006. Some (not all, you need to request it and takes longer to have it) of the ID cards issued are electronic. They contain a RSA key pair and a X.509 certificate. There are some mandatory use cases, (eg: all documents or emails being transmitted to Governmental agencies must be digitally signed) and some optional ones (you can store fiscal documents as signed PDFs if you don't want to store them physically for ten years). Among regular citizens it has very little use. It has some quirks, but it's a step forward. To boost its usage, the EU should issue a standard and ask every country to adopt it.