Uruguay takes step to simplify international businessThursday

December 08, 2011 3:45 PM

Uruguay has joined 102 countries around the world in ratifying the Hague Convention on the apostille, in a move that will make it faster, cheaper and more efficient to do business internationally.

On 15 November, Uruguay passed a law abolishing the requirement to legalise foreign public documents - a lengthy, complicated and costly procedure that applied for Uruguayan businesses abroad and for companies coming into the country.

According to Ferrere Abogados partner Sandra Gonzalez, the introduction of the apostille will be met with a collective sigh of relief from Uruguay’s legal community. “I think this is really sensational news. This is very welcome in the legal community here in Uruguay,” she says.

Guyer & Regules partner Álvaro Tarabal describes the previous process as bureaucratic. A set of authentications of the signature on the document had to be supplied, and the number and type of certificates which had to be issued depended on the nature of the documents. For example, a document issued under the seal of a Uruguayan notary public might require preliminary authentication by the Supreme Court of Justice, followed by further authentication from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finally the seal of the foreign embassy or consulate in Uruguay.

Replacing this drawn-out procedure is the apostille, a stamp recognised in 102 countries around the world and issued by a competent authority which Uruguay is yet to designate, although it is expected to be the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From now on, the stamp will provide sufficient proof of the authenticity of international documents, which – if questioned – can be further verified by accessing a register maintained by the relevant authority.

The fact that the legalisation process was so time-consuming and costly often came as a surprise to clients, and required lengthy explanations. “I’m not saying it’s a deterrent…but it was definitely not good news in the sense that they complained: ‘how come we have to spend so much money!’” Gonzalez says.

Jiménez de Aréchaga, Viana & Brause partner Fernando Jiménez de Aréchaga (h) agrees: “This measure eliminates the competitive disadvantage that we had with respect to most of our neighbours, which had already adopted the apostille.”

According to Jiménez de Aréchaga, the old legalisation process would generally take, in the best case scenario, around five business days. With the introduction of the apostille, this will be reduced to one day. “Anything which reduces costs and red tape is very welcomed by the business community in Uruguay,” he says.

The introduction of the apostille brings with it few downsides, other than reduced income for Uruguayan consulates around the world which will no longer be able to charge for the legalisation process. Tarabal says as well that there has been some speculation as to the consequences of engaging in a process which is less secure than legalisation.

That it should take Uruguay so long to ratify a convention which is so beneficial to international business and used in most Latin American countries comes as little surprise to Tarabal. “The fact that Uruguay has not approved the Hague Convention for so long is another example of the conservative and traditional way of seeing international matters,” he says.

What made the absence of the apostille more challenging was the fact that not every country has a Uruguayan consulate, meaning that the documents had to be sent to a neighbouring country for authentication – further adding to the length of the process. “The difficulty is even greater if you consider that Uruguay is a very small country, which does not have many consulates around the world,” says Gonzalez.

Although the Uruguayan parliament has already approved and ratified the treaty, it has now to be submitted to the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), and will take between two and three months to come in force.

But, after years of tolerating a bureaucratic legalisation process, a couple of months will not seem long to foreign investors, which Uruguay’s legal community hope will be encouraged by the news that one more obstruction to efficient business has been stripped away. “Clients prefer simpler and faster ways to do business - that’s always the case,” says Gonzalez.

(Source: Latin Lawyer)

8 December 2011