Can you sign international contracts with an electronic signature?
This is an interesting question and one that is often asked in practice. Within the EU, we are used to applying the provisions of the EU Regulation 910/2014, the so-called eIDAS Regulation, according to which a qualified electronic signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten signature. A qualified electronic signature issued in one Member State is recognised by all other Member States (Article 25 of the Regulation). Thus, a contract concluded under the law of one of the 27 EU Member States and signed with qualified electronic signatures issued by any of the Member States will be treated as complying with the written form requirement.
The situation becomes more interesting when the contract is governed by the law of a non-EU country, such as Swiss law, which is very popular in international trade. Admittedly, Article 14.2bis of the Swiss Code of Obligations puts a qualified electronic signature on an equal footing with a handwritten signature. But there is a catch: it must be a qualified electronic signature that complies with the relevant Swiss regulations (i.e. the Federal Act of 18 March 2016 on Electronic Signatures). Signatures that comply with the eIDAS Regulation are by no means treated as equivalent. Therefore, if such a contract needs to be concluded in writing, it cannot be signed with our EU qualified signature; we would need a Swiss qualified signature.
The situation is even different for the UK. After Brexit, the EU eIDAS Regulation was transferred to the UK legal order by the Electronic Identification and Trust Services for Electronic Transactions (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and continues to apply there as the so-called UK eIDAS. The UK also recognises EU qualified signatures that meet the conditions of the EU eIDAS Regulation. However, there is no reciprocity – EU countries do not automatically recognise UK eIDAS compliant qualified signatures. This means that if a contract with a UK counterparty is governed by the law of an EU country and needs to be in writing, the UK counterparty will need to sign the contract in their own handwriting.
