Hague Apostille Convention

Purpose of the Convention

The Apostille Convention facilitates the circulation of public documents executed in one State party to the Convention and to be produced in another State party to the Convention.1 It does so by replacing the cumbersome and often costly formalities of a full legalisation process (chain certification) with the mere issuance of an Apostille (also called Apostille Certificate or Certificate). The Convention has also proven to be very useful also for States that do not require foreign public documents to be legalised or that do not know the concept of legalisation in their domestic law: the citizens in these States enjoy the benefits of the Convention whenever they intend to produce a domestic public document in another State party which, for its part, requires authentication of the document concerned.

Public documents

The Convention applies only to public documents. These are documents emanating from an authority or official connected with a court or tribunal of the State (including documents issued by an administrative, constitutional or ecclesiastical court or tribunal, a public prosecutor, a clerk or a process-server); administrative documents; notarial acts; and official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures. The main examples of public documents for which Apostilles are issued in practice include birth, marriage and death certificates; extracts from commercial registers and other registers; patents; court rulings; notarial acts and notarial attestations of signatures; academic diplomas issued by public institutions;2 etc. Apostilles may also be issued for a certified copy of a public document. On the other hand, the Convention neither applies to documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents nor to administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations (e.g., certificates of origin or import or export licenses).

Who may issue an Apostille and how to assess the origin of an Apostille?

Apostilles may only be issued by a Competent Authority designated by the State from which the public document emanates (for more information, including the list of Competent Authorities designated by the Contracting States, contact details of Competent Authorities and other practical information such as the price for an Apostille, see the “Apostille Section” on the HCCH website). The Permanent Bureau (Secretariat) of the Hague Conference on Private International Law does not issue Apostilles. The Apostille is placed by the Competent Authority on the public document itself or on an allonge. The Apostille must comply with the model annexed to the Convention. In addition, each Competent Authority is required to keep a Register in which it records the Apostilles it has issued. The Registers, which may be accessed by any interested person, are an essential tool to combat fraud and assess the origin of an Apostille in case of doubt.

The effects of an Apostille

The only effect of an Apostille is to certify the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the person signing the document has acted, and where appropriate, the identity of the seal or stamp which the document bears. The Apostille does not relate to the content of the underlying document itself (i.e., the apostillised document).

Monitoring of the Convention

The Apostille Convention's practical operation was last reviewed by a Special Commission in 2003. The Special Commission confirmed the “very wide use and effectiveness” of the Convention, as well as the “absence of any major practical obstacle”. Nonetheless, the Special Commission “emphasised that the use of information technology (IT) could have a positive impact on the operation of the Convention, in particular through lowering costs and increasing the efficiency of the creation and registration of Apostilles.” Most importantly, the Special Commission “noted that the spirit and letter” of the Convention “do not constitute an obstacle to the usage of modern technology and that [its] application and operation can be further improved by relying on such technologies.” These findings were confirmed by the First and Second International Fora on e-Notarization and e-Apostilles held in 2005 and 2006 respectively.