Qualified electronic signature

What it means

Under the eIDAS Regulation a qualified electronic signature carries the same legal effect as a handwritten one and is recognised across the European Union. It is created with a qualified certificate and a device meeting the Regulation’s requirements.

It is not a picture of a signature in a PDF or a name at the foot of an e-mail. A signature belongs to a person; an organisation gets a qualified electronic seal, which marks company documents and does not stand in for the director.

The eIDAS regulation distinguishes three levels: simple, advanced and qualified electronic signatures. Only the qualified one has by law the effect of a handwritten signature; an advanced one, as offered by contract-signing platforms, may be enough in business dealings, but in a dispute its authenticity has to be proved.

How it works in practice

In Slovakia the signature sits on the chip of the ID card, with certificates loaded on it and a PIN of its own. It signs filings sent through slovensko.sk to an authority’s official e-mailbox and deeds going into the collection of deeds.

For a company the director signs, or a person holding an authorisation granted in the mailbox; a signature cannot be lent out. Certificates expire, and an older document verifies reliably only when a qualified timestamp was added.

Many managing directors sign with a qualified signature only a few times a year. So they need not deal with every filing, they give us a power of attorney to represent them before the financial administration and keep their own signature for documents they must sign personally, such as the financial statements.

What to watch out for

The certificates on the ID card have a validity of their own and run out before the card does. Finding that out on the deadline means the annual statements or the register filing go in late: renewal cannot be done in an hour and the penalty lands on the company.

A signature is tied to the exact content of the file. When a signed document is saved again, edited or converted to another format, the signature stops being valid and the filing is rejected; attachments for the Register of Financial Statements are therefore signed only in their final form.