TL;DR: Yes. Under the EU's eIDAS Regulation, an electronic document, signature or seal cannot be denied legal effect or admissibility as evidence solely because it is electronic (Articles 46, 25(1) and 35(1)), and a qualified electronic seal carries a legal presumption of integrity and correct origin (Article 35(2)) that every Member State must recognise (Article 24a(1)). Every TRUE Original document is anchored on a public blockchain, and a TRUE Original diploma also carries an eIDAS qualified electronic seal held by TRUE Value Software AB.
Yes. A digital certificate is legally valid in the European Union in the sense a court tests first: eIDAS bars any court from denying it legal effect or admissibility as evidence solely because it is electronic. Article 46 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 says so for every electronic document, and Articles 25(1) and 35(1) say the same for electronic signatures and electronic seals.
"An electronic document shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in electronic form."
Article 46, Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS), consolidated text including Regulation (EU) 2024/1183
Article 25(1) applies the same rule to signatures: "An electronic signature shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements for qualified electronic signatures." Article 35(1) repeats it word for word for electronic seals, which belong to organisations rather than to people.
That rule is a floor. A court still decides how much a document proves, as it does with paper. Two provisions lift a document above the floor. Article 25(2) gives a qualified electronic signature "the equivalent legal effect of a handwritten signature". Article 35(2) gives a qualified electronic seal a presumption.
The EU's legal framework for electronic documents is built on one regulation: eIDAS (Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services). Enacted in 2014 and binding across all EU member states, eIDAS establishes clear rules for when electronic documents carry legal weight. Article 52(2) sets the start date: "This Regulation shall apply from 1 July 2016", with a short list of exceptions. Not all digital certificates are created equal, though: a PDF attachment and a blockchain-secured credential are worlds apart in terms of legal standing, integrity and trust.
Three principles matter most for digital certificates:
A platform that meets all three requirements under eIDAS gives your digital certificates the same legal standing as their paper equivalents, often stronger, because the proof is built into the document itself. In practice, "eIDAS compliant" means that the organisation issuing the certificate uses a platform that ensures document authenticity through verified issuer identity, protects integrity through tamper-proof technology, and provides a permanent verification mechanism that anyone can access. This is how organisations across Europe are already issuing credentials, from government agencies to universities to professional training providers.
Article 35(2) of eIDAS says that a qualified electronic seal "shall enjoy the presumption of integrity of the data and of correctness of the origin of that data to which the qualified electronic seal is linked." For a sealed diploma, the law presumes two facts: the diploma comes from the organisation named in the seal, and nobody has changed it since sealing. A party that disputes either fact has to rebut the presumption.
The presumption covers origin and integrity. The grades inside stay the institution's own judgement, as TRUE's guide to eIDAS-sealed university diplomas sets out.
A qualified seal needs a qualified certificate behind it, issued by a qualified trust service provider (QTSP). TRUE Value Software AB holds its own qualified certificate for electronic seals, held since May 2026.
Yes. Article 24a(1) of eIDAS, added by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 of 11 April 2024, says a qualified electronic seal based on a qualified certificate issued in one Member State shall be recognised as a qualified electronic seal in all other Member States. A diploma sealed in Stockholm under a certificate from a QTSP in another Member State is a qualified seal in Madrid, Warsaw and Dublin on the same terms.
"Qualified electronic signatures based on a qualified certificate issued in one Member State and qualified electronic seals based on a qualified certificate issued in one Member State shall be recognised, respectively, as qualified electronic signatures and qualified electronic seals in all other Member States."
Article 24a(1), Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183
The same article makes qualified certificates for electronic seals, issued in one Member State, qualified in all the others (Article 24a(3)). The seal's status travels with the file.
You check that an electronic seal is qualified by looking up the trust service provider behind its certificate on the EU trusted lists. The European Commission states that "a trust service provider and the trust services it provides will be qualified only if it appears in a trusted list" (European Commission, EU Trusted Lists). The qualified seal on a TRUE Original diploma rests on a certificate from a qualified trust service provider on an EU trusted list.
Each Member State keeps its own list. The Commission makes all of them available to the public in one place, the trusted list browser, where a provider's qualified services are listed country by country.
An electronic certificate means one of two things. In everyday speech it is a diploma, course certificate or licence issued in digital form instead of on paper. In eIDAS it is a certificate for an electronic signature or an electronic seal: an electronic attestation that ties the data used to check a signature or seal to a named person or organisation.
A digital diploma is an electronic document, so Article 46 protects it. The 2024 amendment added a term for digital proof of facts about a person, the electronic attestation of attributes, defined in Article 3(44) as "an attestation in electronic form that allows attributes to be authenticated". Article 45b(1) gives it the same protection against refusal on the sole ground that it is electronic. Annex VI lists "Educational qualifications, titles and licences" among the attributes Member States must make verifiable against public authentic sources.
The second meaning is technical. Article 3(14) defines a certificate for electronic signature as "an electronic attestation which links electronic signature validation data to a natural person and confirms at least the name or the pseudonym of that person". Article 3(29) defines a certificate for electronic seal as "an electronic attestation that links electronic seal validation data to a legal person and confirms the name of that person".
Outside eIDAS the same object is usually called a public key certificate or a digital certificate. The NIST glossary defines a public key certificate as "A digital representation of information which at least (1) identifies the certification authority (CA) issuing it", followed by the subscriber, the subscriber's public key, the operational period and the signature of the certification authority (NIST, CSRC glossary). Under eIDAS the certification authority behind a qualified certificate is a qualified trust service provider.
A signature certificate is the digital identity certificate of a person. A seal certificate belongs to a university, a company or an agency. A TRUE Original diploma uses both meanings at once: the diploma is the first kind, and the qualified seal on it rests on the second kind, TRUE Value Software AB's qualified certificate for electronic seals.
A digital certificate is valid for the period its issuer sets. Every qualified certificate for an electronic signature or seal must state "details of the beginning and end of the certificate's period of validity" (eIDAS Annex I(e) and Annex III(e)), and a revoked qualified certificate loses its validity from the moment of revocation (Articles 28(4) and 38(4)). A diploma or course certificate is valid for as long as its issuer says: a degree has no end date unless the issuer writes one, and a qualification that must be renewed can carry an expiry date.
Validation asks whether the qualified certificate "was valid at the time of signing" (Article 32(1)(b), applied to seals by Article 40), so the test looks back to the moment of sealing, not to the day someone checks. Article 34, which Article 40 also applies to seals, sets the rules for qualified preservation services that extend that trustworthiness "beyond the technological validity period".
A TRUE Original document stays checkable throughout. Its fingerprint sits on a public blockchain, and TRUE Verify compares the document with that record at any time, free and without an account. Every TRUE document includes a QR code and is accessible through a verification portal. An employer, regulator or auditor needs no special software or blockchain knowledge: scan the code and see the verified TRUE document. It works the same way on day one and ten years later, and verification works months, years or decades after issuance.
Website certificates run on a much shorter clock. Under CA/Browser Forum Ballot SC-081v3, adopted in April 2025 with Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla voting yes, the maximum validity of a public TLS certificate falls from 398 days to 47 days in steps between March 2026 and March 2029.
Yes, UK law accepts electronic signatures and seals on the same terms as the EU text it inherited. The UK version of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 on legislation.gov.uk keeps Article 25(1), Article 35(1) and Article 35(2) word for word as quoted above, and section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes an electronic signature and its certification "admissible in evidence".
For seals from the EU, Article 24A of the UK version decides. It says that, for the purposes of Article 35(2) and the other qualified-level provisions, anything not qualified under the UK regulation "is to be treated as qualified if: (a) it is qualified under the equivalent EU law". A qualified electronic seal based on a certificate from an EU qualified trust service provider therefore carries the Article 35(2) presumption in the UK as well. Article 24A was in force on 3 October 2026, according to legislation.gov.uk.
The law settles admissibility. An employer or a university in the UK still decides what it accepts as proof of a qualification, and a document that anyone can check against a public record gives it something to check.
Yes. A blockchain-secured certificate is an electronic document, so Article 46 of eIDAS bars a court from denying it legal effect or admissibility as evidence solely because it is electronic. The blockchain anchor itself is not an eIDAS electronic seal and not a qualified electronic time stamp, because qualified status requires a qualified trust service provider and a public blockchain is not one.
A PDF can be edited in three clicks. Change a name, swap a date, alter a grade, and the document looks identical to the one that was issued. There is no built-in mechanism to detect tampering, which is why leading credential platforms use blockchain to secure digital certificates.
The anchor does a different job. When TRUE Original issues a document, it writes the document's SHA-256 fingerprint to a public blockchain. This fingerprint, called a hash, is mathematically unique to that exact document. Change one character and the fingerprint no longer matches. TRUE works with several public blockchains, among them Ethereum and Polygon, and a customer who wants a specific chain can have it. No single company, the issuer and TRUE included, can alter or remove the record.
TRUE Original writes documents to several public blockchains, among them Ethereum, AVAX, Fantom and Polygon. Each blockchain has different strengths (speed, cost, decentralisation, ecosystem size), so the four are not redundancy for its own sake. Using four ensures that even if one network experiences issues, the verification record remains accessible on the others.
TRUE's article on blockchain timestamps and eIDAS qualified time stamps goes through Articles 41 and 42 in detail.
TRUE Original puts two separate layers on a diploma. The eIDAS qualified electronic seal from TRUE Value Software AB's own certificate carries the Article 35(2) presumption of origin and integrity in every Member State. The public blockchain anchor gives anyone an independent record that the document has not changed, which they can check without asking TRUE or the issuer.
The institution needs no seal of its own. Under Mandated Issue, the university stays the named issuer and TRUE applies the qualified seal on its behalf, with the mandate terms embedded in each credential. A whole graduating class goes out in one batch.
The qualified status comes from the seal and its qualified certificate. The blockchain anchor does not make the seal qualified, and it does not need to. Each layer does its own work.
Course certificates, licences and memberships issued with TRUE Original carry the blockchain anchor and open on the issuer's own domain. TRUE Original has issued over 900,000 documents for more than 200 issuers in over 15 countries.
Government agencies, security authorities, municipal governments and medical universities in Europe already issue blockchain-secured, eIDAS-compliant digital certificates through TRUE Original. Bolagsverket, the Swedish Companies Registration Office, ran a blockchain pilot with TRUE Original for business registration documents and built Proof of Business with TRUE in eight weeks.
When a national government agency trusts a platform with official records, that is as strong a credibility signal as it gets. Bolagsverket's pilot was no experiment in a sandbox: it was a real-world test of whether blockchain-secured digital documents could meet government-grade requirements for authenticity and integrity.
SSF Stöldskyddsföreningen, which has trained people in security since 1934, has been Sweden's authority on security and crime prevention for over 80 years. SSF now issues blockchain-secured proofs of education through TRUE that an employer can check without contacting SSF.
"SSF offer extensive training in Security to our customers... It has been particularly important for us to be able to ensure that our Proofs of Education... are correct and secure."
Maria Dahlstedt, Program Manager, SSF
For an organisation whose entire reputation rests on security, choosing TRUE says something about the platform's integrity.
Södertälje Kommun used TRUE to issue blockchain-secured diplomas for its HACK FOR SÖDERTÄLJE innovation event.
"Amazing. I tip my hat for your design TRUE! It was really fun to be able to give Blockchain-secured diplomas to the winners of HACK FOR SÖDERTÄLJE."
Anthony Mccarrick, Digitization Strategist, Södertälje Kommun
Karolinska Institutet, one of the world's leading medical universities, uses TRUE for medical training certificates. In healthcare, where fraudulent credentials can endanger lives, verification is not optional: it is essential.
Government agencies, security authorities, municipal governments and medical universities do not take compliance risks. They chose a platform that meets their legal and regulatory requirements, and that platform is TRUE. Digital certificates are legally valid in the EU when they are built on the right foundation: eIDAS sets the standard and blockchain provides the proof, and the organisations already using this combination include some of Europe's most compliance-conscious institutions.
eIDAS 2.0, Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, adds the European Digital Identity Wallet, the electronic attestation of attributes and the cross-border recognition rule in Article 24a. Article 5a(1) requires each Member State to "provide at least one European Digital Identity Wallet within 24 months of the date of entry into force of the implementing acts" that set the wallet's technical rules.
For diplomas, the European route already runs through the qualified seal. To be EDCI-compliant, under the European Digital Credentials Infrastructure behind Europass, a diploma must be signed with an eIDAS qualified electronic seal. A TRUE Original diploma carries one, so a graduate can store it in Europass today and carry it on to the wallet as it rolls out.
EU regulation is moving in one direction: more digital, more verifiable, more standardised. The EU Digital Identity Wallet is a framework that will allow every EU citizen to store and present verified credentials digitally, a secure, government-backed digital wallet for identity documents, qualifications and certificates. Digital credentials are becoming part of EU identity infrastructure as policy, not as a trend.
Organisations that issue verifiable digital credentials today are already aligned with where EU regulation is heading, and those still issuing PDFs or paper will need to catch up. Interoperability matters: the credentials you issue should be built on standards that work within the evolving EU digital identity ecosystem. TRUE Original is already eIDAS compliant and positioned for this shift. Organisations using TRUE are not scrambling to adapt to new regulations; they are already there.
An organisation issuing digital certificates should check what the law asks of the document and what a stranger can check on it. A TRUE Original diploma meets every line below.
Legal and compliance teams evaluating platforms for issuing digital certificates in Europe should also check the items below. TRUE meets every item on this checklist.
Regulatory compliance
Document integrity
Verification
Audit and accountability
Future-readiness
Most US-based platforms do not offer eIDAS compliance, EU data residency or blockchain-secured integrity, and European organisations are increasingly recognising the difference. TRUE Original is eIDAS compliant, blockchain-secured and trusted by European governments and universities, with over 900,000 documents issued, verified by anyone, anywhere, forever.
Opened in the European Commission's Europass viewer, a TRUE-sealed credential comes back verified.
Yes. Article 46 of eIDAS says an electronic document shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence solely because it is electronic, and Articles 25(1) and 35(1) say the same for electronic signatures and seals. A qualified electronic seal adds a presumption of integrity and correct origin under Article 35(2).
An electronic certificate is either a diploma, course certificate or licence issued in digital form, or, in eIDAS terms, a certificate for an electronic signature or seal, which public key infrastructure calls a public key certificate or digital certificate. A TRUE Original diploma uses both: the diploma is the first kind, and its qualified seal rests on TRUE Value Software AB's qualified certificate for electronic seals.
Under eIDAS, an electronic signature belongs to a natural person and an electronic seal belongs to a legal person such as a university or a company. A qualified electronic signature has the equivalent legal effect of a handwritten signature (Article 25(2)), and a qualified electronic seal enjoys a presumption of integrity and correct origin (Article 35(2)).
A qualified certificate for an electronic signature or seal is valid for the period written into it, as eIDAS Annexes I and III require, and loses its validity from the moment it is revoked. A diploma or course certificate is valid for as long as its issuer says, and a public TLS website certificate may be valid for at most 47 days from March 2029 under CA/Browser Forum Ballot SC-081v3.
Yes. Article 24A of the UK version of eIDAS treats a seal that is qualified under EU law as qualified for the purposes of the Article 35(2) presumption of integrity and correct origin, according to legislation.gov.uk on 3 October 2026.
Look up the trust service provider behind the seal's certificate on the EU trusted lists: the European Commission states that a trust service provider is qualified only if it appears in a trusted list. The qualified seal on a TRUE Original diploma rests on a certificate from a qualified trust service provider on an EU trusted list.
No. The blockchain anchor is an independent public record of a document's fingerprint, and qualified status under eIDAS requires a qualified trust service provider. The qualified status of a TRUE Original diploma comes from TRUE Value Software AB's qualified seal certificate, held since May 2026.
Open the document link, scan its QR code or paste the link into TRUE Verify at trueoriginal.com/verify, which is free and needs no account. TRUE Verify compares the document with its record on the public blockchain.
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