As a Certification Service Provider, CATCert carries out a periodic review of the certificates issued by the Registration Entities. idCAT, through periodic audits. In this process, we have verified that there are about 500 idCAT's issued with an incorrect NIE format, as it contains more characters than it should. Specifically, in the vast majority of cases we have detected, the ERs put a "0" between the initial letter and the numerical code and, therefore, the certificate is issued incorrectly. You have told us that you work with applications that require this extra numeric character, but you must bear in mind that it is essential that the number of the document EXACTLY MATCH what appears in the document provided by the citizen.
The regulation in this respect is marked by the Ministry of the Interior, which in the "ORDER INT/2058/2008, of July 14, which modifies the Order of the Ministry of the Interior of February 7, 1997, by which the Foreigner's Card is regulated, as regards number of foreigner's identity" establishes that "...The Foreigner's Identity Number will be made up of nine characters with the following composition: An initial letter, which will be the X, followed by seven digits or numerical characters and a code or alphabetic verification character that will be defined by the competent Ministerial Department. Once the numerical series corresponding to the letter X has been exhausted, the alphabetical order will continue."
Therefore, the NIE can have a maximum of 9 characters. In order to avoid certificates being issued incorrectly, during theeres weeks we will inform all holders of incorrectly issued certificates of this situation, let them know that we will revoke their certificate and, finally, we will revoke them ex officio from CATCert.
In parallel with this, and in order to prevent erroneous certificates from being issued again, we plan to make an improvement to the operator website during the month of September to prevent idCAT's with a NIE that does not meet the requirements set out in the previous ministerial order, so it will only allow the entry of NIE numbers that meet the characteristics indicated above.
If you detect that any citizen has (erroneously) a NIE with 10 characters, we would ask you to let us know, and we would send the case to the Dirección General de la Policía to study it.
