On 9th June 2016 the European Parliament adopted a Regulation to do away with the obligation to insist on the requirement of obtaining an Apostille for certain categories of ‘Public documents’ issued in EU Member states when a citizen of an EU country presents such ‘Public documents’ in another EU country outside of the issuing EU country. The Regulation also makes changes as regards the necessity of obtaining translations for certain ‘Public documents.’
The Regulation was aimed at reducing costs, time and bureaucracy for EU citizens when transacting across EU countries.
Given the UK’s recent referendum result to discontinue EU membership, it remains to be seen how this Regulation will impact UK citizens when and in the event that ‘Brexit’ is implemented.
It is understood that the types of ‘Public documents’ this Regulation will apply to include the following:
A public document issued by the authorities of a Member State that evidences or establishes one or more of the following facts (Art. 2(1) of the Regulation):
• birth
• a person being alive
• death
• name
• marriage, including capacity to marry and marital status
• divorce, legal separation or marriage annulment
• registered partnership, including capacity to enter into a registered partnership and registered partnership status
• dissolution of a registered partnership, legal separation or annulment of a registered partnership
• parenthood
• adoption
• domicile and/or residence
• nationality
• absence of a criminal record and
• the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections and elections to the European Parliament
As regards translations, the Regulation also does away with the need for translations of certain public documents e.g. birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates, etc. As regards translations, an EU country where a public document is presented cannot insist that the document be translated if the public document is in one of the official languages of the Union country or in another non-official language that the Union country can accept. Further the Regulation introduces multilingual standard forms. These forms will be in all Union languages and can be used by citizens in another Union country as translation aids attached to their public document. Accordingly in this way citizens can avoid translation requirements.
The Regulation has passed in to EU law but it will take time to be fully implemented. The Regulation gives Member States around two years to implement the necessary steps for the issuance of multilingual standard forms.
Regulation name: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on promoting the free movement of citizens by simplifying the requirements for presenting certain public documents in the European Union and amending Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012