Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of public documents from France by apostille.
France acceeded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in 1965. Therefore, there is no diplomatic authentication or consular legalization of public documents from France is required for the legal communication with other member states of the Convention. The documents only need to be attested by an apostille certificate with an "apostille" stamp on it by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
France has further bilateral agreements with several European countries. In these countries, no legalization of documents from France is required. However, as a precaution, we recommend that you still get an apostille in some cases. We will check for you free of charge whether you need the apostille.
Responsible for issuing the apostille are the following authorities:
- Court of Appeals (Paris)
- Local Courts of Appeals
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" must be in French.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Trade register excerpts
- Court decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state registration body (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
The apostille can be exclusively issued for the original document. Therefore, the latter must be presented in good condition, with all stamps and signatures clear and readable. Furthermore, it should not contain alien markings or labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your public documents, we can provide you with high-quality translations.
Should you require company information for use in court, it needs to be legalized as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Franceextracts from the commercial register of Albania including apostillization and translation.
On average, processing the documents takes 14 days.
Courier services are charged and invoiced separately according to the courier service’s rates.
You can pay for our services by PayPal, bank transfer or credit card.
| Service | Price incl. German VAT 19% | Price excl. VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Price for an apostille for a document from France without international shipping | from 154,70 € | from 130,00 € |
