Qualified Electronic Signature – eIDAS Striking Czech Public Sector Bodies

Abstract

Electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services (“eIDAS”) is a standardized system for trustworthiness, effectiveness and efficiency. Since 2018, Czech public sector bodies have to use qualified electronic signatures when officially acting via electronic documents. This calls for a pioneering study entailing three purposes: (i) to identify provisions set by the EU law and Czech law of this duty and to interpret them, (ii) to study and assess how this duty is materialized and observed while using a pioneering Czech micro case study and (iii) to discuss and compare the yielded results with the status quo in other EU member states. A multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional research of primary and secondary sources is performed along with a Czech micro case study exploring the readiness, implementation and consequences of this new duty on five Czech public sector bodies – Prague municipalities. The qualified electronic signature is a reality in the EU, but its standardized use is welcome and materialized with varying intensities.

Keywords

• eIDAS
• qualified electronic signature
• public sector body
• electronic communication
• digital single market