Brussels, 24/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission proposed, on Wednesday 24 April, to slash the red tape involved when moving from one member state to another and decided to facilitate the recognition of 12 categories of public document, including birth and marriage certificates, which will no longer require authentication. A regulation adopted by the College of Commissioners is proposing to scrap the “Apostille” stamp and a further series of arcane administrative requirements for certifying public documents for people living and working in other member states. The Commission says that citizens and businesses will no longer be required “to provide costly 'legalised' versions or 'certified' translations of official documents when, for example, registering a house or company, getting married, or requesting a residence card”. Twelve categories of public documents would automatically be exempted from formalities, such as “Apostille” and “legalisation” (including intellectual property rights certificates and not having a criminal record). Commissioner Viviane Reding is pushing forward the regulation and said on Wednesday that the Commission is hoping that, by abolishing these requirements, savings of up to €330 million will be made for citizens and businesses in the EU, not counting the “time saved and inconvenience” that is avoided.
The new rules will not have any effect on the recognition or effect of the documents concerned but “will only help prove the authenticity of the public document, for example, whether a signature is authentic and the capacity in which the public office holder is signing. This will have to be mutually accepted between member states without any additional certification requirements”, the Commission says.
In addition to getting rid of the legalisation and apostille requirements, the new rules also intend to remove the requirement for having to produce a certified copy at the same time as the original public document and authorises, instead and at the same time, a non-certified copy and the original. It also allows non-certified translations of public documents provided by the authorities of other member states to be accepted. Cooperation between the different national authorities is also expected to be improved, as well as the fight against fraud. The Commission is also proposing a further simplification tool: optional multilingual standardised forms in all EU official languages that citizens and businesses could request instead of and under the same conditions as national public documents concerning birth, death, marriage, registered partnership and legal status and representation of a company or other undertaking.
Reding explained that the regulation contains safeguards against fraud and potential abuse of the system. If a national authority has reasonable doubt about a particular document, member states will be able to check its authenticity with the issuing authorities through the existing Internal Market Information system (IMI). (SP/transl.fl)