New Scope for Evidentiary Value of Digital Signatures

After the issuance of Decree No. 182/2019 (the “Decree”) that established the new regulatory framework of the Digital Signature Law No. 25.506 (“DSL”) and repealed the previous Regulatory Decrees No. 2628/2002, 283/2003 and 724/2006, and articles 8, 9 and 10 of Decree No. 561/2016 (see https://www.marval.com/publicacion/nueva-reglamentacion-de-la-ley-de-firma-digital-13336&lang=en), certain interpretative doubts were raised on the scope of section 2 of its Annex, which provided that “the digital signature of an electronic document satisfies the certification requirement established for the handwritten signature”.

Such doubts led to several concerns, including claims regarding its constitutionality (see, for example, Federal Civil and Commercial Court No. 5, “Notary Association of the City of Buenos Aires v. National State Chief of Cabinet of Ministers re. Precautionary Measure”, Docket 4451/2019).

In its current wording, after the modification introduced by the Decree No. 774/2019, section 2 of the Annex to Decree 182/2019 now determines that “the digital signature of an electronic document satisfies the requirement of certification established for the handwritten signature in any procedure carried out by the interested party with the centralized and decentralized National Public Administration”.

Thus, Decree No. 774/2019 has adjusted the scope of the value as a “certified” signature of the digital signature to its use for procedures with the centralized and decentralized National Public Administration.