CEF eSignature facilitates the first electronic signature on an EU regulation!

Why was the project set up?

With the eIDAS Regulation, the EU introduced a single framework for electronic identification and e-signatures (electronic signatures). It promotes interoperability across the 28 EU countries, ensuring that, for example, a document signed in Helsinki can be validated in Lisbon. The eIDAS Regulation establishes a qualification scheme for e-signatures and providers of e-signature services. Qualified e-signature service providers can issue certificates to any citizen or business for the creation of qualified e-signatures, legally equivalent to handwritten signatures across Europe.

To set an example for all of Europe, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (EP) joined forces to e-sign a regulation. A first for e-signatures and a first for European legislation!

On 25 October 2017, Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, and Matti Maasikas, of the Estonian Presidency of the Council, e-signed the new Security of Gas Supply Regulation in support of the digital transformation of the European Union and the Digital Single Market strategy.

Antonio Tajani e-signing on behalf of the European Parliament

Why electronic signatures?

Adopting legislation is usually a time-consuming, paper-based process. From the drafting of the legislation to its publication, the document is printed, signed, scanned, delivered or disposed many times. Legislative documents tend to be large – the Security of Gas Supply Regulation in all 24 languages, counts over 3000 pages – and the signing act requires the physical presence in Strasbourg of signatories representing the European Parliament and the rotating presidency. E-signing with all its benefits improves the legislative process on a number of fronts.

The European Union has entered the age of digitisation, and by signing electronically a legislative act (classified by the lawyers as “body of secondary EU law”) the European Parliament and the Council of the EU have sent a political signal to all Member States about it.

How do the CEF building blocks fit in?

For the signing ceremony, the European Parliament prepared a signing application, the European Parliament Electronic Signature Console, based on the Digital Signature Service (DSS). DSS is an open-source library for the creation and validation of e‑signatures and e-seals developed by the Connecting Europe Facility's (CEF) eSignature building block.

DSS was chosen as the signing 'engine' of the signing application for its out-of-the-box support of the eIDAS Regulation and European standards for e-signatures. In particular, according to the European Parliament, DSS provides full support for the signing of a PDF document, the required format (PDF/A) for the ceremony. DSS also proved highly flexible, being reusable in different topologies, possible to be integrated in its entirety or on a module-by-module basis.

How was the signing application developed?

The e-signing was the result of a collaboration between different European Union institutions, bringing together the Estonian presidency of the Council, the General Secretariat of the Council and the General Secretariat of the European Parliament. The European Commission provided technical support for the DSS library.

Start with the legal basis

The starting point was the legal analysis, an important step due to the novelty of the use of an e-signing tool in the European legislative process. A first task was to define the level of trust of the used e-signatures. Inspired by the eIDAS Regulation, the chosen e-signature type was the qualified e-signature, legally equal to handwritten signatures. A qualified e-signature guarantees the highest level of security and legal value defined in the Regulation and is acknowledged in all Member States of the EU, necessary for a legislative act of such high-level juridical value.

Build the solution

With the legal aspects clarified, the Directorate-General for Innovation and Technological Support of the European Parliament began to look at the technical solution for the job. The initial approach was to use the Parliament's Digital Signature Portal (DiSP). This tool – also based on the DSS library – is used by the Members of the European Parliament to e-sign legislative amendments and the Parliament's civil servants to e-sign administrative forms and documents.

Due to technical and security considerations however, a separate tool was prepared for the signing ceremony - the European Parliament Electronic Signature Console. The Console offers a number of additional features, some of them specific to qualified e-signatures. For that, the Parliament's ICT Security Unit provided the necessary components, such as trusted certificates, smartcards and access to a timestamp server.  The Console was built as a stand-alone Java application.

What sets the signing application apart from other solutions?

To meet the requirements of a legislative process, the signing application was designed to conform to strict legal requirements and best-practice standards for security and technical attributes.

Second, compared to other signing solutions in the market, the application accepts a wide range of smartcard profiles, including many national smartcards used for electronic identification and many commercially available smartcards.

Third, the application allows the user to set a predefined workflow that constrains the e-signing process for a dedicated purpose. The workflow defines the signatories of the document, the order of the signatories, the date of the e-signature, etc.

What's next?

Now that the first e-signing of a legislative document has taken place, the Parliament is now considering further possibilities for the use of the application, and its potential to be applied in various processes. One of the possibilities is adapting the application and integrating it with the existing internal DiSP portal, allowing a choice of e-signature levels (simple, advanced, qualified) depending on the legal value of the document. Using the application for everyday work will reduce costs and time, increase security and ensure processes can be conducted digitally from beginning to end.

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