Document legalization

[9][10][11][12][13] Some countries have agreements eliminating the legalization requirement for certain documents issued by each other, such as between Argentina and Italy,[14] between Brazil and France,[15] between parties of the Convention on the Issue of Multilingual Extracts from Civil Status Records,[16][17] and between parties of the Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

[18][19] The European Union also has a regulation eliminating the legalization requirement for certain documents of its member states to be accepted by each other.

[20] The Apostille Convention is intended to simplify the legalization procedure by replacing it with a certification called an apostille, issued by an authority designated by the country of origin.

[7][21] In any case, after the apostille, no certification by the destination country is required.

[1] The removal of this service is intended to prevent excessive certifications potentially required by overzealous institutions,[22] but in cases where a consular certification alone would otherwise be sufficient to legalize a document and the apostille procedure requires more steps or higher fees, the convention may actually result in a more complex or more costly procedure to certify the document.