The digital public document has been the theme of the congress held on February 13 and 14 within the framework of the ICADE-Fundación Notariado Chair on Legal Security in the Digital Society. The conference, structured in two parts, dedicated to The electronic document as a new documentary instrument and The substantial digitization of the notarial document, was inaugurated by Abel Veiga, Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Comillas Pontifical University (Comillas ICADE), and Segismundo Álvarez , vice-director of the Chair.
Veiga said the extraordinary interest aroused by the day, with more than one hundred registered online. For his part, Álvarez highlighted the value of the documentary aspect in Law: "Any practical jurist is aware of the importance of documents when it comes to asserting rights." For the notary, these conferences perfectly meet the objective of the Chair: "Basing the legal on a rigorous knowledge of the technological part."
The closing of the congress was carried out by a charge by Sofía Puente, General Director of Legal Security and Public Faith, who stated: “In the Administration of Justice we have been entering the path of digitalization for years. It is an unstoppable and irreversible path and the Spanish Notariat could not stay out of this path”.
first day
Information and electricity. Digitization as a material step to the intangible, under the title of the inaugural conference, delivered by the notary and director of the Chair, Manuel González-Meneses. In his speech, he affirmed: "The Law is thought, information, data... If the technique offers us today more efficient means of communication, recording and conserving the information, which are also completely widespread in our society, and if the phenomenon of Information is today infinitely broader than it was in the past, as lawyers we cannot live with our backs to that reality, we cannot link our destiny to paper technology”.
Next, the first round table, From the traditional to the electronic document, was moderated by the notary Juan Álvarez-Sala and had as speakers José Ángel Martínez Sanchiz, president of the General Council of Notaries and the Notaries Foundation, and José Antonio Vega, Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Extremadura.
Martínez Sanchiz made a record for the history of the legal document, going back to bar tables, blackboards, papyri and parchments. “The road to formal authenticity,” he noted, “was long and difficult. The seals will be included in the Roman tablets and in the papyri of sales contracts. Those stamps on someone else's thing are reminiscent of the current electronic signature. Authenticity was linked to the credibility of the author: veritas and legalitas, and to the consideration of the notary as a public agent”.
José Antonio Vega was in charge of the 'electronification' of the legal document, which -in his opinion- does not give rise to a new legal category, but rather a change in terms of code, support and process. The professor pointed out that "new technologies have produced a new instrument, the electronic document, which responds to the evolution of communicative language among men and that the signifiers of information can be codified physical magnitudes."
In the subsequent colloquium, Martínez Sanchiz, facing the conception of the legal document as a mere "reproduction" of an act for evidentiary purposes, upheld the value of the document as a form of expression of the negotiable will, and therefore as an element that gives existence business in the legal world not limited to the litigious field.
Electronic document technology was the subject of the second panel, which featured José María Anguiano, a lawyer and graduate in Computer Science, and Rafael Palacios and Javier Jarauta, both industrial engineers and professors in the ICAI Department of Telematics and Computing.
Anguiano explained the concept and the different use cases of hashes (or fingerprints of a file), as cryptographic tools to ensure the integrity of electronic files. Palacios explains the function of asymmetric cryptography algorithms and their use as instruments to achieve confidentiality and guarantee of origin or signature, advice on the possible impact of the development of quantum computing on the security of this algorithm. In short, Jarauta addressed the problem of the conservation over time of the computer files and illustrations to the attendees with regard to long-lasting electronic signatures in order to maintain the possibility of authentication over time of electronic documents.
The third table focuses on the electronic document of a public nature, in its triple typology of administrative, judicial and notarial documents. With the notary Francisco Javier García Más as moderator, the speakers were Antonio David Bering, PhD assistant professor of Administrative Law at the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville; Juan Ignacio Cerdá, lawyer and associate professor of Administrative Law at the University of Murcia, and the notary Itziar Ramos.
Bering explained the advances in all electronic administrative files and their translation into administrative documents in exclusive electronic support, drawing attention to the concept of document management and the distinction between digitization of pre-existing paper documents and what is a genuine electronic document. For Cerdá, “in Spain we cannot yet speak of electronic justice. There are structural and personal problems: failure of the judicial bodies, of judges and prosecutors. Nor has the new judicial headquarters been implemented and there are problems of technological indolence, lack of interoperability between the procedural management systems. On the other hand, Ramos has dealt with the state of the digitization of notarial proceedings, which is the establishment with the vein of years by Law 24/2001, which has advanced, the original notarial document or matrix in electronic format, admitting the dispatch of authorized and simple electronic copies, but restricting the scope of circulation of the former.
second day
The following round table, dedicated to the European experience, of an international nature with the participation of David Siegel, part of the Board of Directors of the Federal Association of Notaries of Germany; Jeroen Van Der Weele, notary public of the Netherlands; and Jorge Batista da Silva, President of the Portuguese Notary Association.
David Siegel presented the system already adopted in Germany which, transposing Directive 2019/1151, allowed the telematic constitution of limited liability companies and their presentation in the Mercantile Registry. He detailed the technical means that allow notarial performance at a distance with the same guarantees as in person and the new regime and system for the creation and preservation of electronic master deeds.
Van Der Weele pointed out that, in the current legislative development in his country, "it is only possible to establish limited liability companies in person before a notary public" as they have not yet adapted to the Directive, but he explained that there is a legislative project similar to the German standard. Da Silva, for his part, said that the Portuguese Decree Law 126/2021 established a temporary legal regime for authorization, through videoconference, determined public deeds and also clarified the mechanism for the telematic download of electronic authorized copies.
Next, the notary Carlos Higuera gave the conference Incidence of the bill for the transposition of the digitization directive of capital companies in the notarial document. In it, he carried out a clarifying analysis of bill 121/000126 currently being processed in the Congress of Deputies, as it affects notarial documents, with such important innovations as the introduction of an electronic protocol that has reflected the entire protocol of paper and that under the control of the corresponding titular notary will be deposited and preserved in the system of the General Council of Notaries; as well as the possibility of remote notarial granting for certain types of documents, among which are those related to the incorporation of companies and other acts of corporate life.
The future of the notarial document was the last round table of the Congress. With the interventions of the notaries José Carmelo Llopis, Fernando Gomá and Javier González Granado, José Cabrera, a lawyer and researcher at the Comillas University, acted as moderator.
Llopis focused his presentation on remote granting, as a method of granting an electronic document. Specifically, the speaker divided his intervention into three points. First, the need for a secure channel for providing the documents necessary for the granting to the notary. Second, the empowerment of the notary's electronic file. And third, the advantages of the electronic document, in particular, its interoperability.
Gomá presented a paper on electronic copying in the cloud. After reviewing the current system for issuing authorized electronic copies only for referral to other notaries, registries or administrative or judicial authorities and for a specific purpose, the new system for externalizing the notarial document that will bring with it the aforementioned bill was dealt with. , which will allow access to the copy in electronic format to any person who demonstrates a legitimate interest.
In short, González Granado addressed the issue of the matrix and the electronic protocol, emphasizing the advantages of an electronic matrix in which it will be considered to include dynamic content through hyperlinks.
