France is set to become the first European country to use facial recognition technology to give citizens a secure digital identity in a move critics say is premature given the privacy stakes.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government is due to roll out an ID program, dubbed Alicem, in November, earlier than an initial Christmas target, after an experimental six-month test phase.

Alicem - an acronym for “certified online authentification on mobile" - is an application enabling “any individual who decides to use it to prove his identity on the internet in a secure manner,” says the interior ministry website.

The app reads the chip on an electronic passport and crosses its biometric photo with the phone user via facial recognition to validate identity.

Once confirmed, the user can access a host of public services without further checks.

However, France’s data regulator, CNIL, has warned that the program breaches the European rule of consent because it provides no alternatives to facial recognition to access certain services.

Fears over state security standards were raised earlier this year after a hacker took little over over an hour to break into a “secure” government messaging app, challenging its claims that such technology is almost impregnable.