Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of documents from Tunisia by apostille.
Tunisia has joined the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in the year 2017, the Convention entered into force on March 30, 2018. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Tunisia is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination. Germany, Austria, Belgium and Greece do not accept the apostille from Tunisia, so you still need a legalization procedure.
Responsible for issuing the apostille is the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of Tunisia.
Documents issued by the Tunisian authorities or notaries in Arabic can be apostilled.
The legalization process in Tunisia consists of checking the origin and authenticity of the document. At the end of the procedure, a special stamp is placed on the document, in other words - the apostille. Usually the apostille is on the back of a certificate or on a single piece of paper, after which the documents are stitched together.
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
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefor, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Tunisia including apostille and translation.
Usually, processing the documents takes us 14 days.