The Supreme Court recently reached the conclusion that an email without an electronic signature does not meet the requirements of a written form, i.e. those of a legal action in writing. This specific case concerned a dispute on the invalidity of the termination of a lease, where the court concluded that objections to the termination submitted by email could not be considered written objections (and must therefore be treated as if never raised). According to this legal opinion it therefore follows that no actions where the law requires the written form could be made by email, unless the email is electronically signed.

We consider this conclusion to be excessively formalistic and going against current practice, which until now has concluded, without significant problems, that email messages where the author provides their email address and full name at the end fulfil the requirements of the written form of valid legal actions, i.e. fulfil the requirements of a document and signature as prescribed by the Civil Code.

We are also of the opinion that this ruling is in conflict with the new Article 3(10) of the so-called eIDAS regulation (Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council which – simply put – places the written and electronic forms on equal footing). With this in mind we can only hope that future judicial interpretations take this regulation into account and eventually reverse the controversial conclusions of the Supreme Court. Until then however, it must be recommended that all legal actions which require the written form and are carried out by email, do so exclusively with an attached electronic signature.