New Official Journal publication resetting the chain of pivot LOTLs

The European Commission has published the recently modified location of the ‘list of trusted lists’ (LOTL), as well its latest set of signing certificates in the Official Journal of the European Union, available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2019.276.01.0001.01.ENG.

Initially, the LOTL location and the set of signing certificates of the LOTL (termed ‘LOTL-signing certificates’) are specified in the Official Journal. Then, following a decision of the Commission to modify the LOTL location or the set of LOTL-signing certificates, the Commission may publish these modifications in the LOTL itself, to enable systems using the LOTL to process the change automatically. Such instances of the LOTL are referred to as the chain of ‘pivot LOTLs’: the pivot LOTLs represent successive pivot points in the historical values of the LOTL location and the LOTL-signing certificates starting from values published in the Official Journal. More information about the pivot LOTL mechanism can be found https://ec.europa.eu/tools/lotl/pivot-lotl-explanation.html. Following this mechanism, as announced on 13 August 2019 in this news article, the Commission recently changed the LOTL location (from https://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/esignature/trusted-list/tl-mp.xml to https://ec.europa.eu/tools/lotl/eu-lotl.xml) and published this modification in a pivot LOTL.

The new publication in the Official Journal resets the chain of pivot LOTLs, confirming all information already contained in the last pivot LOTL. To that end, all references to the pivot LOTLs will be removed from the LOTL (in particular, from the <SchemeInformationURI> element in the LOTL). The first issuance of a LOTL anchored to the new Official Journal publication, with an empty chain of pivot LOTLs, is scheduled for 4 September 2019. As before, the Commission may then publish future updates to the LOTL-signing certificates (or the LOTL location) via pivot LOTLs, to enable automated processing of the updates. 

Finally, please note that the LOTL will continue to be published in parallel on both the old and new locations until at least the end of 2019. However, we strongly recommend updating any existing IT solution making use of the LOTL as soon as possible to take the new location of the LOTL into consideration.