YEARS OF EUROPEAN ONLINE ANNÉES DE EN LIGNE ...

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING OF LEGISLATION —
TOWARDS AUTHENTICITY ( 1 )
1. INtRODUCtION
the working Group on Authenticity was one of the working groups established
by the European forum of Oficial Gazettes in September 2004 in
Vienna.
Since 2004, there has been a clear need for work on this issue. the use of
electronic legal gazettes has been growing rapidly. At the same, the number of
paper copies of legal gazettes and the number of subscribers have been decreasing.
therefore printing the paper copies has become less cost-eficient.
the working group has analysed the general context of authenticity in the
electronic publishing of legislation. the authenticity of electronic legislative
documents cannot be seen as an isolated issue, but rather as a part of the complicated
process of publishing legislation in paper and electronic form.
Since the forum meeting in Copenhagen in September 2005, there has
been ongoing discussion on the authenticity of electronic legal gazettes in
most countries. In the majority of them the paper version of law is still the only
authentic one. the approach of the working group has been very pragmatic,
based on the experiences of the participating countries, which have taken very
different approaches to solve the issue of authenticity.
the methods of authentication of the texts in legal electronic gazettes have
been discussed in the working group by delegates from Austria, Belgium, Estonia,
finland, france, Germany, Greece, hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia,
Lithuania, Portugal and Spain. the group has been chaired by Aki hietanen
(finland) with maria manuela Cruz (Ofice for Oficial Publications of the
European Communities) acting as secretary.
AKI HIETANEN
Director of Information
Services, Ministry of Justice,
Finland
( 1 ) the published version is the inal report of the working Group on Authenticity set up
by the European forum of Oficial Gazettes which was presented on 14 and 15 June
2007 in its helsinki–tallinn meeting. During the workshop, mr hietanen presented the
state of work in November 2006. the full version of the report, including all its
annexes, is available on the forum website (http://circa.europa.eu/irc/opoce/ojf/info/
data/prod/html/index.htm).
96 | 97
01_2007_5222_txt_ML.indd 97 6-12-2007 15:13:51