While many firms and legal departments expound the benefits of going paperless, many also express hesitancy when bringing contracts and legally binding documents into the digital realm. After all, how can one know that an electronically signed document will hold up in another jurisdiction, let alone in another company? While this uncertainty may not be addressed for the entire globalized marketplace for some time, those in or doing business with the EU will soon find much needed standardization in this field in coming months, according to a white paper released by AIIM and Kofax.
By July 1, 2016, the EU will implement new e-signature regulation No. 910/2014, commonly known as eIDAS, which will apply to all its 28 member states. The regulation, which replaces the decades-old EU directive 1999/93, “will bring an end to some over-regulations caused by different interpretations of the directive into national laws across the EU,” said Bob Larrivee, chief analyst at AIIM.
