The Committee on Legal Affairs adopted the report by Pavel SVOBODA (EPP, CZ) on the draft Council regulation amending Regulation (EU) 216/2013 on the electronic publication of the Official Journal of the European Union.
The committee recommended that the European Parliament give its consent to the draft Council regulation.
The aim of the proposal is to update the procedure for authenticating the electronic version of the OJ by an electronic signature. Directive 1999/93/EC on a Community framework for electronic signatures provided for the use of a qualified certificate for such signatures. That Directive has since been repealed and replaced by Regulation No 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, which introduced the possibility of authenticating a document with an advanced electronic seal.
According to the Commission, the use of such an advanced electronic seal would make it possible to automate the electronic signature and accelerate the procedure for publication of the OJ on the EUR-Lex database.