Luxembourg As Precursor In Europe Of 'Paperless Office' Reform. The Electronic Archiving Revolution Is Underway.

After six years of preparation, a legal revolution began on 13 February 2013 in Luxembourg with bill n° 6543 on electronic archiving1 .

The system in force is almost a quarter of a century old and no longer fits with the actual needs: this bill is the first step of a long-awaited reform strongly promoted by businesses, professionals of the financial sector and administrations to reduce the use of paper for economic, practical and logistic reasons. Bill n° 6543 introduces a new Law2 , amends the Law of 5 April 1993 on financial services and replaces the Grand Ducal Regulation of 22 December 1986 by a new Grand-Ducal Regulation on the dematerialisation and conservation3 of documents. This new reform is expected to be implemented before the end of this year. On the European side, there is no EU Regulation applicable to electronic archiving. Luxembourg appears to be the first EU country that has initiated such a reform.

The Electronic Archiving Reform's Main Principles Are:

Recognition Of The Legal Value Of The Dematerialised Documents And Establishment Of Legal Presumption Of The Copies' Conformity To The Original.

This principle is the keystone of the bill. Following article 1333 of the Civil Code, a judge may require the production of an original when a copy is provided by a party, and may reject this copy for the sole reason that only an original is better evidence than an electronic copy. The burden of proof lies with the party who wishes to establish that a copy is in fact a copy of the original.

This could create an unfavourable situation for those professionals who have taken the decision to store all their documents electronically and to destroy originals. Therefore, the Luxembourg Financial Services Authority (CSSF) recommends to financial professionals "not to destroy documents commonly admissible as proof before the courts and which remain principally in paper form4".

The recognition of the legal value of paperless documents will be guaranteed by the future Law and its Regulation to provide holders of stored and/or dematerialised documents legal certainty and confidence in the development of electronic archiving. In this context, two important points are listed in the bill. On the one hand professionals who would be interested to obtain the presumption of the copies' conformity to the original for their stored and/or dematerialised documents will have to liaise with a new type of provider created by the reform: "the...

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