The System of Apostille Issuance Introduced in Moldova
From Today, March 16, the Ministry of Justice finally starts to issue apostilles (you can read more news on this in Romanian and also to appoint the date for submitting documents to be affixed with apostille on the Ministry's official site). Last year the Moldovan Parliament adopted the Law on Joining the Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (adopted in Hague). In February this year the Government adopted the Regulation on the Order of Apostille Issuance that stated that apostille should be issued and recognized from March 16 (the date when the Convention comes into force for Moldova).
And that is a very good news I think. A couple of years ago I had to legalize a proxy issued by a Moldovan company to its representative in Turkey. And here's the row of actions that I had to undertake:
1. Certification of the proxy by a notary.
2. Translation of the proxy.
3. Certification by the notary of translator's signature.
4. Certification of the notary's seal and signature by the Ministry of Justice.
5. Certification of the seal the Ministry of Justice by the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
6. And finally - certification of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' seal and legalization of proxy at the Consulate of Turkey.
SIX (!!!!!) steps in order to send a very simple document to another country. Thankfully we won't need to do it again...
posted by Alexei Ghertescu @ 12:49 PM
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Alexei, I guess this is probably good news, but I should warn you that it may not make much of a difference in the number of steps. A couple of my own experiences with apostilled documents:
1. Working in Moscow (where I think Russia has been a party to the Hague apostille convention) for an American employer and having to present Apostilled copies of the US entity's corporate documents required them to be 1) notarized 2) certified by the "secretary of state" of the state where the documents were issued (a requirement to get the apostille) and 3) apostilled in the US; then 4) translated into Russian and 5) notarized in Moscow.
2. Getting married in Moldova in 2000 and having to provide documents to the Oficiul Starile Civile required the exact same five-step process.
So, in the future, when preparing docs for Turkey, you may still have to get them translated (depending, I guess, on how the authorities operate there), the only difference will be that the translation would take place _after_ you've obtained the Apostille.
But I don't want to be negative about this - it is still progress!
What about the digital signature? The law is there, check out LEGEA REPUBLICII MOLDOVA, cu privire la documentul electronic şi semnătura digitală, Nr. 264-XV din 15 iulie 2004, and CTS is very close to getting things started by setting up a national CA that will become the root CA of other ones in Moldova.
CA = Certification Authority, it is a server that stores the public keys of each certificate holder, among other things.
If you read the law, you'll see that the digital signature will be valid in any other country which has an agreement with Moldova.
It would be great if I could read the opinion of someone from the 'other side' (about the digital signature). I hope you'll research this and share your impressions with us.
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