Electronic Apostilles – an innovation launched by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine

“We are introducing a new progressive service – electronic Apostille. It’s an appropriate certification of documents of non-commercial nature received by Ukrainian citizens from justice bodies in order for them to subsequently submit them to competent bodies abroad. This concerns sales contracts, certified by a notary; court decisions; birth certificates and other documents”, - stated the Minister.

Previously 120 thousand citizens, who had annually addressed the Ministry of Justice for this service, had to address justice bodies 4 times – submit documents to the main administration of justice in their region, after the documents have been submitted, the administration filed them to the Ministry of Justice in Kyiv. And only at the Ministry of Justice Ukrainian citizens from all regions could receive this document. Such system created a fruitful ground for bureaucracy, queues and corruption.

“Ukraine will join the electronic service the main point of which is that citizens are able to submit documents for their authentication by an electronic Apostille at any office of civil registration according to citizens’ place of residence. These documents are processed by an electronic system, documents get authenticated by an electronic Apostille and these documents may be both printed directly from the website or obtained at the same registry office within 24 hours. No need to travel to Kyiv, no need to stand in lines”, - emphasized the Minister.

Authorized representatives of countries to which the documents are being submitted to can verify authenticity of the Apostille and the document with the help of a register.

There are 23 countries in this system including USA, Great Britain, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia, Georgia, Moldova and others.

“We are in the top 20 countries that use electronic Apostille in cross-border transactions. 2 weeks after publishing the resolution the innovation will be operating in test mode. And then it will start its work on a regular basis”, - summarized Pavlo Petrenko/