Apostille

What it means

An apostille is the certificate by which a state confirms the signature and seal on a public document are genuine. Under the Hague Convention it replaces slow consular legalisation.

It is issued by the country the document comes from, not the country where you want to use it. A Slovak commercial register extract is apostilled by a Slovak authority, not by an embassy abroad.

An apostille confirms only that the signature, the seal and the capacity of the person who signed or certified the document are genuine. It does not verify that the content is true and says nothing about whether the document meets the requirements of foreign law. An authority abroad can still reject it, for example if a power of attorney lacks the scope of authority its rules demand.

How it works in practice

In practice you need one to set up a subsidiary abroad, open an account for a foreign national, employ foreign staff or prove the beneficial owner in a foreign register.

A certified translation almost always goes with it. Order matters: apostille the original first, translate afterwards, or the translation will not carry the certificate and gets rejected.

When a foreign member joins a Slovak s. r. o., we receive their papers from abroad: an extract from the local register, a power of attorney, a specimen signature. The apostille is then arranged in the foreign country, a Slovak certified translator does the translation, and only with the full set does the commercial register filing go in.

What to watch out for

Some countries do not accept an apostille and require full legalisation through an embassy, which takes weeks. The other trap is age: banks and registers often want a document no older than three months, so getting it early wastes it.

A common mistake is wanting an apostille on a plain copy. It is issued on a public document or on a notary’s certification of a signature or copy; a photocopy of a commercial register extract will not get one, and the process starts over. Anyone signing before a foreign notary should ask straight away how to get the apostille added.