Bureaucracy reduction for the release of public documents in the Member States

On 24^th April the European Commission proposed the reduction of paperwork required to obtain recognition of authenticity of public documents in another Member State. Enterprises operating across borders in the EU single market are currently asked to provide a series of documents proving their legal form and the authenticity of documents issued by their country of origin. The same thing happens to citizens. The European Commission's proposal aims at putting a stop to these complicated procedures by exempting citizens and enterprises from providing expensive “legalized” versions or "certified" translations of official documents. In this way we could save up to 330 million, but also time and hassle. Moreover, standard forms will be available in all official EU languages and could be used under the same conditions as national public documents, thus relieving citizens and enterprises from translation costs. The proposal also provides for safeguards against fraud. If a national authority has a doubt on the authenticity of a document, the Member States will be able to verify it with the authority who has released it through the internal market information system (IMI).