From February 16th 2019 a new Regulation 2019/1191 is in force. Its purpose is to encourage the free movement of citizens by simplifying the requirements for presenting some official documents in the European Union.
The adoption of the Regulation is a result of the development of the relationships between people and businesses from different member states. The aim is to reduce step by step the administrative complications in the document turnover between the individual member states by removing the requirements for legalization and Apostille for official documents.
The new rules will apply to some of the most prevalent documents. From February 16th 2019 the new regime will be applied to certificates of birth, certificates of death, identity certificates of a person’s names, certificates of marriage, divorce, origin, adoption, domicile and/or residence, citizenship. It is also envisaged that the Regulation will be applied to the criminal record but only if it is issued by the member state which the individual is a citizen of.
During the second stage an extension of the Regulation’s scope is expected. It should include public documents regarding certificates of good standing of companies, diplomas, public documents attesting an officially recognized disability, etc.
You can take advantage of this new procedure by indicating the necessity for a multilingual standard certificate when applying for an official document. The multilingual standard certificate is attached to the official document and its purpose is to replace the necessity for translation of the document to which it is attached.
Therefore, after the Regulation comes into force, when presenting a multilingual standard certificate it should not be required to provide a translation of the official document. However, due to the wide variety of facts, circumstances and documents, translation may be necessary in some cases.