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A Country-by-Country Guide for Qualified Electronic Signatures
Where a QES works, where it is enough on its own, and every regional nuance to plan for.
A qualified electronic signature is the one electronic signature that counts as a handwritten signature in all 27 EU and 3 EEA states. Select any country in the reference to open its full row: act by act status, whether e-notarisation is live, the notified eID, and the one thing to watch.
Schedule a DemoFive things to take away
- 01A qualified electronic signature (QES) is the one electronic signature that counts as a handwritten signature in all 27 EU and 3 EEA countries, and it is recognised across every one of them.
- 02That makes it the strongest and most portable signature to build a cross-border product on. Adopt it once and it works everywhere.
- 03A QES is legally sufficient for the vast majority of business, employment, consumer and insurance signing, so it is a safe default.
- 04A short set of high-form acts, mainly property, mortgages and wills, still needs a notary or registry step alongside.
- 05Everything here is verified against primary law, and every regional nuance is called out, so nobody on your team, or your customer’s, has to read a national statute or gets surprised mid-implementation.
What a QES is, and why it works across borders
eIDAS recognises three tiers of electronic signature. They climb in legal assurance rather than in kind, and all three are valid signatures.
Tier 1 · SES
Simple electronic signature
Data in electronic form used to sign, such as a typed name or a click-to-sign box. It cannot be denied legal effect just for being electronic, but it carries no built-in proof of who signed.
Art 3(10), Art 25(1)
Tier 2 · AES
Advanced electronic signature
Adds identity and integrity. It must be uniquely linked to the signatory, able to identify them, created under their sole control, and tamper-evident, so any change after signing shows.
Art 3(11), Art 26
Tier 3 · QES
Qualified electronic signature
An advanced signature built on a qualified certificate and a qualified signature creation device. The only tier that automatically carries the same legal weight as a signature written by hand.
Art 3(12), Art 25(2)
A QES made in one member state is recognised as a QES in all the others under Article 24a(1), and Article 25(2) gives it the same legal effect as a signature written by hand.
A qualified electronic signature is the top tier of electronic signature defined by EU law, and the only one that automatically carries the same legal weight as a handwritten signature. It comes from the eIDAS Regulation, Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, as amended in 2024. That uniformity is the reason a QES is the natural foundation for any product that signs across borders or needs the highest level of legal certainty and non-repudiation.
eIDAS standardises the signature, but each country still decides what steps an act needs to be valid. So a QES clears the handwritten-signature bar everywhere, and where national law asks for nothing more than a signature, which is most of business signing, a QES is enough. Where national law asks for more, a notarial deed or an entry in a public register, that step is added.
Where a QES fits in a signing workflow
Most adoption decisions come down to three cases. The country reference then tells you which case each act falls into, per market.
Cross-border, high-value or high-trust contracts, regulated onboarding, anything an auditor or counterparty will later test
Everyday commercial, employment, consumer and insurance signing
Real estate, mortgages, wills and other notarised acts
A QES is a safe thing to standardise on. It is never legally insufficient for ordinary signing, it is uniquely portable across borders, and the only places it does not finish the job on its own are the high-form acts.
Where a qualified signature is enough, country by country
Pick an act, then read the map. Blue means a QES is legally enough and a simpler e-signature would also work, so the friction is your call. Yellow means a qualified signature is the practical requirement. Red means a QES on its own does not finish the job, and a notary, registry entry or witness completes the act.
The everyday-contracts and insurance views read QES-ready for all 30 states, because that is the honest EU-wide position. Most contracts carry no special form, a QES binds them, and no state imposes a notary on an insurance contract. The exceptions are specific rather than country-wide, and they are the ones worth knowing before a flow is built.
Notified-eID data is the European Commission’s February 2026 snapshot and should be re-checked before you rely on the exact figures. Where a country is not listed in that snapshot it is marked as not stated.
Full reference · all 30 countries
Scroll sideways for the later columns. Select a row to open it on the map.
The documents national law keeps on paper
A short set of everyday-looking documents are carved out of electronic form by name, and they catch teams who assume commercial contracts are all fine to e-sign.
A notice of termination must be on paper. Consumer suretyship under §766 needs written form.
Electronic signature is excluded for personal or real security and for family-law and succession instruments, unless a professional signs for business purposes.
Both exclude electronic conclusion for consumer guarantees and for family or succession acts.
Disapplies electronic form to wills, trusts, enduring powers of attorney, dealings in real property, and affidavits.
Keeps wet ink for wills, family-law contracts and documents that must be notarised.
Transfers of shares in a Malta company and bills of exchange cannot be e-signed, alongside immovable-property deeds.
Bars electronic contracts for real-estate rights in rem, acts needing a notary, and family or succession law.
How far each region has come on e-notarisation
The direction of travel is toward more digital, not less. Knowing which markets are furthest along tells you where a QES-first workflow meets the least resistance today.
DACH and the notarial heartland
Online company formation: German video incorporation since 2022, Austrian electronic founding since 2019. Property and most deeds are still in person.
Strong (ID Austria, mobile signature). A QES is common for everyday commercial contracts.
Incorporate without visiting a notary, taking days out of company setup.
Latin and Western civil-law
Electronic and remote notarial acts (France 2005 and 2020, Italy’s electronic public deed, Spain’s Ley 11/2023, Portugal’s remote acts) for company formation, powers of attorney and lower-stakes deeds. Property and wills remain largely excluded from full remote notarisation.
Strong national eIDs (SPID and CIE, itsme, Chave Móvel Digital). Qualified signing is routine, especially in Italy.
Many notarial acts can be executed remotely, and the notary’s own QES gives the digital deed full authenticity.
Central and Eastern Europe
Simplified online company formation (for example Poland’s S24). Czechia accepts a QES plus a qualified timestamp for property registration in the cadastre.
Rising fast, with deep QES use in e-government and banking, notably Bulgaria.
Removes the notary bottleneck where it lands (the Czech cadastre is the sharpest case) and enables same-day company setup.
Baltics
Remote notarial acts including real estate (Estonia by video since 2020), plus remote notarial services in Latvia and Lithuania.
Highest in Europe. Estonia’s ID-card, Mobile-ID and Smart-ID are a QES used for almost everything.
Sign, incorporate and even complete a notarial property act fully remotely, the basis of Estonia’s e-Residency.
Nordics
None by design. There is no notary, and fully digital land and company registries do the work instead. Some acts still need witnesses or wet ink (Sweden’s transfer deed, Finland’s purchase witness).
Near-universal national eIDs (MitID, BankID, the Finnish Trust Network).
Onboarding, company formation and charge registration complete in minutes with a national eID and no paper.
Common law and no Latin notary
Not applicable, there is no notary to digitise. Company formation runs through online registry filing (Ireland’s CRO, the Cyprus Registrar).
A QES or advanced signature clears most commercial, employment and consumer contracts.
Among the lowest-friction markets in scope. A straightforward e-signature closes most deals.
E-notarisation moves from a narrow beachhead in the DACH states, through a broadening set of acts in the Latin and Western markets, to the Baltic frontier where even a notarial property act is remote, while the Nordics and the common-law states reach the same digital-by-default endpoint by having little or no notary to digitise in the first place. In every direction the trend favours a QES-first workflow.
Standardising on a QES across the EU and EEA?
Shufti verifies the signer to the standard a qualified certificate depends on, as a Registration Authority under ETSI TS 119 461. Book a short call to map your signing flow market by market.
How eIDAS 2.0 and the EU Digital Identity Wallet make a QES easier to adopt
The change on the horizon is the European Digital Identity Wallet, introduced by eIDAS 2.0, Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, in force since 20 May 2024. It makes a QES easier to adopt, not harder.
The wallet can sign
Every member state’s wallet will be able to create a qualified electronic signature.
Free for individuals
Each member state must offer that signing capability to individuals free of charge, the use of which may be limited to non-professional purposes.
Regulated sectors must accept it
Large private organisations in regulated sectors, banking, financial services and telecommunications among them, will have to accept the wallet.
In practice this lowers the two barriers that used to make teams hesitate over a QES: the cost of obtaining one, and the fact that some users did not hold a national eID. The timeline runs on clocks tied to the technical implementing acts rather than fixed calendar dates.
Six checks that turn this map into a clean rollout
List the acts you sign
A commercial contract, an employment document, a property transfer and a will are four different questions, not one.
Pick your standard
For anything cross-border or high-trust, adopt a QES as the default. It is portable and always sufficient.
Read your launch markets on the map
Confirm each act is QES-ready, and note any marked Notary or registry so you plan the step in advance.
Check the carve-out list
Confirm none of your documents sit on a national wet-ink or exclusion list: employment termination, consumer guarantees, security and family instruments, wills and affidavits.
Handle onboarding separately
If you also run KYC, plan the AML identity route and its national condition alongside the signature.
Verify identity to the right standard
A QES is only as trustworthy as the identity proofing behind it, so make the identity step the strong part of your flow.
Where Shufti fits: the identity behind the signature
Adopting a QES cleanly comes down to one thing: proving who is signing. eIDAS requires a signer’s identity to be verified to a defined standard before a qualified certificate is issued, and eIDAS 2.0 sharpens that further toward a notified eID at level high, the EU Digital Identity Wallet, or another method that identifies a person with a high level of confidence.
Shufti is the identity layer behind the signature. It operates as a Registration Authority under ETSI TS 119 461, the European standard for identity proofing in trust services, and performs the full verification a qualified signature depends on: document authentication, biometric liveness, face matching, and, where the use case requires it, review by a trained operator.
Shufti’s qualified trust service provider partner, Evrotrust, listed on the EU Trust List, issues the qualified certificate and signs on the strength of that verified identity. Shufti proves the person, the QTSP issues the signature.
ShuftiProves the person. Registration Authority under ETSI TS 119 461.
Evrotrust, QTSPIssues the qualified certificate and signs. Listed on the EU Trust List.
Document and face check
A standard document check with a face match.
NFC chip read
An NFC read of a passport or ID card’s chip.
Live video session
A live video session with a trained operator.
National eID
Authentication through a national scheme, such as BankID in Sweden, MitID in Denmark or SPID in Italy.
The AML route runs alongside, not instead
The EU AML Regulation, which applies from July 2027, lets a business verify identity through either of two means (Art 22(6)): an identity document checked against reliable and independent sources, or electronic identification at eIDAS level substantial or high together with relevant qualified trust services. For remote onboarding, the draft technical standards set an order of preference, electronic identification or a qualified trust service first, and a safeguarded remote document check as a fallback the business must be able to justify. Across both routes the constant is the same: a real person, reliably verified.
Shufti verifies identity to the Baseline level of proofing (LoA Substantial) required for qualified certificate issuance under eIDAS, as an approved Registration Authority within Evrotrust’s QTSP scope. As eIDAS 2.0 raises the bar to LoA High and brings the EU Digital Identity Wallet into force, Shufti is building to that standard so your signing flow keeps pace as the rules tighten rather than scrambling after they do. Every signature carries up to 10 years of long-term validation and automatic legal recognition.
The identity layer decides whether the signature is trustworthy
See how Shufti verifies identity to the standard a qualified signature depends on, then book a 20-minute demo.
The terms this guide uses
Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, the EU law governing electronic identification and trust services, including electronic signatures. In force since 2016.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, the 2024 update that introduces the European Digital Identity Wallet. In force since 20 May 2024.
The German and Austrian, Dutch, and Italian or Belgian private limited companies.
The certified secure device or service (a card, token, or provider-managed remote device) that creates a QES.
A supervised provider that issues qualified certificates and other trust services. A QTSP holds qualified status and is listed on a national Trusted List.
The eIDAS rule that a QES has the same legal effect as a signature written by hand.
The eIDAS rule that a QES made in one member state is recognised as a QES in all the others.
The confidence level of an eID: Low, Substantial or High. A QES or remote onboarding usually calls for Substantial or High.
The eIDAS 2.0 smartphone wallet every member state must provide, able to prove identity and create a free QES for individuals.
A state-appointed legal officer who draws up authentic instruments, central to property and company acts in most civil-law countries.
A document executed before a notary that carries higher legal force than a private signed document. A QES between the parties does not replace it.
A notary confirming the authenticity of a signature or document.
A notary drawing up or witnessing a deed electronically or by video rather than in person.
A physical, handwritten signature on paper, still required for a few acts.
The property register. Used here for Czechia, which accepts a QES with a timestamp for cadastre entries.
The notarial public deed used for property and company acts in Spain and Portugal.
Italy's notarial public deed. The electronic version is the atto pubblico informatico.
France's notarial deed. The electronic version is the acte authentique électronique.
Liechtenstein's formal land-register declaration step.
A promise to answer for another's debt. Consumer suretyship is a common wet-ink carve-out.
German Civil Code sections requiring wet-ink written form for employment termination, and written form for a declaration of suretyship.
French Civil Code articles requiring a conventional mortgage by notarial act, and excluding electronic signature for security instruments and for family and succession acts.
Excludes wills, trusts, enduring powers of attorney, real property dealings and affidavits from electronic form.
The eIDAS-implementing law, keeping wet ink for wills, family-law contracts and notarised documents.
Bars electronic contracts for real-estate rights in rem, notarial acts, and family or succession law.
Art 1.74 requires notarial form for transfers and encumbrances of immovables. Art 1.73 requires ordinary written form for certain contracts, including insurance, which a QES satisfies.
The rule behind a real-estate deed not being executable fully online.
The Electronic Notarial Form Foundation Act (2019), enabling electronic company founding by qualified mobile signature.
The reform that created the electronic notarial protocol and remote notarial acts, with property excluded.
The simplified online system for forming a limited company.
Certifications
Independently audited and certified for enterprise-grade security and data protection.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
A qualified electronic signature (QES) is the highest tier of electronic signature under the EU’s eIDAS Regulation, and the only tier the law treats as the legal equal of a handwritten signature (Art 25(2)).
Yes. A QES is recognised in every EU and EEA state and is legally sufficient for the large majority of signing, so it is a sound single standard for a cross-border product. Plan a notary or registry step only for the property and notarised acts the map flags.
Real estate transfers, mortgages, wills, and a short list of notarised acts. In most states these need a notarial deed or a registry act that a QES between the parties does not replace. Czechia is the exception for the property cadastre, which accepts a QES with a qualified timestamp.
Not as a matter of law, but often in practice, because many consumer QES journeys are built around the local scheme, and a notified eID at high assurance is one accepted way to prove identity when the certificate is issued. The coming EUDI Wallet is designed to standardise this.
No, they are separate questions. National AML rules add their own conditions to a remote QES onboarding, so plan the identity route and its national condition alongside the signature.
No, it is always legally sufficient, so it is a safe default. If you want to reduce friction on low-risk, high-volume signing, a simpler electronic signature also works, which makes it a cost and user-experience choice rather than a legal one.
Every member state’s wallet will be able to create a QES, free for individuals, and regulated sectors will have to accept it. That makes a qualified signature far easier to obtain and use, which mostly helps the acts that genuinely need one.
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The signature is only as strong as the identity behind it
Document authentication, biometric liveness, face matching, NFC chip reads, live video and national eID, each one resolving to an eIDAS-grade qualified signature through Shufti’s QTSP partner Evrotrust.
