Brussels, 05/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - Citizens and firms moving to another EU country will face less red tape according to a draft regulation passed by Parliament on Tuesday 4 February. This text, which aims to simplify procedures for proving the authenticity of certain public documents, such as birth or marriage certificates, still needs to be approved by the member states.
The report by Bernhard Rapkay (S&D, Germany) was passed by 573 votes to 62, with 44 abstentions. The text lays down rules for testing the authenticity of official documents. The law will do away with administrative formalities such as the “legalisation” or “apostille” certification of certain public documents, such as those proving civil status, family relationship or intellectual property rights. Simplified procedures could be extended to educational records, for example, as well as tax and social insurance documents. MEPs also beefed up rules designed to facilitate acceptance of non-certified copies and translations.
To avoid the need to translate public documents and to help public authorities, the law will introduce new multilingual EU forms which citizens could use instead of national ones to prove birth, death, marriage, registered partnership or the legal status and representation of a company. In addition to these five forms, MEPs amended the proposal to include a further eleven forms concerning name, descent (parents), adoption, non-married status, divorce, dissolution of a registered partnership, union citizenship and nationality, absence of a criminal record, residence, educational certificate, and disability. In the event of reasonable doubt, “the authorities would be able to check the authenticity of a document with the issuing authorities, using the existing Internal Market Information System (IMI)”. (SP/transl.fl)