The Legal Acceptance of Electronic Signatures in Belgian Law: An Overview

• Electronic signatures are increasingly used as an alternative to physical signatures for document signing.
• The legal implications and evidential value of electronic signatures are important considerations.
• Belgian law refers to the eIDAS Regulation for the definition of electronic signatures.
• An electronic signature is data in electronic form attached to or associated with other electronic data, used by the signer to sign.
• Electronic signatures can identify the author and indicate their intent regarding the document.
• Examples include PIN codes, approval clicks, and digital tax filings.
• The eIDAS Regulation distinguishes between three types of electronic signatures based on security level: ordinary, advanced, and qualified.
• Ordinary electronic signatures include scanned signatures, touchscreen signatures, biometric signatures, logins, and approval clicks.
• Advanced electronic signatures must uniquely link to the signer, allow identification, use data under the signer’s exclusive control, and be linked to the signed data to detect changes.

Source: bdo.be

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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