Estonia, that small European country on the edge of the Baltic Sea, is currently the world reference when it comes to digital public administration.

They are the following example of the way in which a democratic State, with a real focus on the citizen, must provide its public services completely digitally with a guarantee of security. Of the 1.3 million Estonians, 98.2% have a digital citizen card that gives them access to more than 500 government and public services.

The automation, digitization, and massive adoption of digital signatures by the population had a huge impact on the way in which people began to perceive digital public services in terms of the impact they have on their productivity and happiness. Furthermore, it allowed the country to have a very positive result in economic terms, saving about 2% of its GDP annually.

It shouldn't be hard to understand why.

Let's imagine thousands of people, in a single day, traveling without being necessary, just to have to sign any document or contract. Let's imagine the loss of productivity, money, increased stress, and the time we would save with a simple change in mentality and digital habits.

I suggest that we now look at the concept of identity so that we have, in some way, the possibility of creating a better real estate market: more connected; more efficient; more secure and more transparent.

Nowadays, if we think about it, in a very simplistic way, it can be said that each one of us has a fractional identity that is distributed by numerous public and private institutions, and a State that is not connected in the least, is not sufficiently secure or transparent. This should concern us.

Therefore, this lack of digital habits seems to be a problem within this paradigm, with no obvious solution and which takes on more worrying contours when it is found that Portugal is part of the European Union with a market of more than 508 million people, 27 different laws and a pressing need for all European citizens to be able to make documentary or financial transfers, in real time, and with the required integrity and reliability.

If we want to have an efficient, much more productive Europe, with the capacity to produce much more added value on a daily basis and much more competitive in international markets, we need to create a single, secure and interconnected digital market.

In response to this need, the European Community Electronic Signatures Act, better known as eIDAS, was created in 2014.

This regulation introduced a radical paradigm shift in digital identification and electronic signature and changed forever the way of doing business and the way in which European companies and citizens will be able to interact going forward. It also introduced a predictable regulatory environment that defined technical and business requirements so that companies, citizens, and public authorities could carry out secure and reliable digital interactions. In addition, the eIDAS regulation also defines the requirements for compliance with the PSD2 open-banking directive and the respective digital certificates. It includes standards for verifying the identity of all owners, as well as the operation of Qualified Trust Services providers, better known as TSPs - Trust Service Providers, that issue them.

Although each Member State had the autonomy to interpret and transpose the law autonomously, the regulation was responsible for establishing the restrictions so that this new digital environment was, in fact, interoperable and not subject to fragmentation of any kind. It is as if we functioned as a federative European State in technological terms, and this was only a consequence so that the initial vision of all the pioneers of the European Community could be feasible.

In force since 2016, eIDAS was developed based on two fundamental principles:

1. Transparency: ensures that individuals and companies can use their own national electronic identification (eID) systems to access public services available online in other EU countries;

2. Interoperability: created a European internal market for trust services, ensuring that they will work across borders and have the same legal status as their traditional equivalent processes, made entirely of paper.

It also seems evident to me that this regulation was prepared by the European Commission with the purpose of strengthening trust in the online transaction system of the European single market, offering a secure digital environment from the outset.

This is one of the many initiatives that the EU has been carrying out for a long time focusing on innovation and digital development in each of its Member States to strengthen its single digital market.

Long Story Short.

Digital signatures have increasingly become a common standard business practice in the EU for individuals and companies to provide legal consent. Everything is possible, from multi-million dollar contracts, to the management of any business issue, or even access to government services. The advantages of adopting digital signatures are obvious and it's easier to visualize them giving real examples.

Two examples within the context of mediation and the real estate market:

Example 1. A real estate consultant who will meet with a client personally, just to be able to sign the Real Estate Mediation Agreement that was already agreed in advance and the client is convinced to give the professional the opportunity to find the best possible offer.

Example 2. We have a client in Switzerland and the way to obtain the Mediation contract is by registered mail. It often gets lost and this process is the most archaic I know of.

Between diesel, parking meters, possible tolls and all the time spent during this process, we always have an unfounded cost in the end.

Standardizing the use of digital signatures in a company's daily life greatly facilitates access to government digital services, guarantees the integrity and legality of the act, reduces a company's vulnerability to fraud and, of course, greatly reduces costs (opportunity and financial) and the time that could be producing value.

The consultant's focus must be on raising and not on the administrative process, therefore, and as is already known, we must respect the Pareto Law, which will certainly make us more hyper-mega-productive to achieve the ratio we all want:

Achieving that 20% of our time spent results in 80% of our results.
Especially because we know that this is a market where the opportunity cost is often a differentiating factor, or in the last case, so that they can focus on the continuous acquisition of real estate and on building relationships of trust and proximity.

It seems clear to me that mediation can, and must, find an opportunity in this new paradigm, and that it could mean acquiring, with all legal and digital security, international clients anytime and anywhere through an intuitive and simple experience.

Those who have digitized their business will have a competitive advantage over everyone else.

An electronic signature is a set of data, in electronic format, that are linked or logically associated with other data in the same format and that are used by the signer to sign an electronic document (Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of July 23, 2014 or eIDAS Regulation).

This concept fits three types of electronic signatures, but I only want to focus my article on advanced signatures (AES) and qualified signatures (QES), which have different legal guarantees and are the product of interest for the real estate market.

Advanced electronic signature (AES) guarantees the authenticity and integrity of a signed document and provides a more robust approach to electronic signatures, incorporating additional key security protocols. According to the measures stipulated by eIDAS, an AES must be uniquely linked to the individual, capable of identifying the signer and is designed using data to create an electronic signature that the signer can, with a high level of trust, use under their exclusive control and is linked to the data signed by them in such a way that any subsequent alteration of the data (immutability) is detectable.

Qualified electronic signatures (QES) provide the highest level of security for electronic signatures and have the same legal value as a handwritten signature. Yes, the same legal value. It's a subscription based on the same security protocols as an advanced subscription. However, there is a fundamental difference between an advanced electronic signature and a qualified electronic signature. The latter requires a qualified signature creation device (QSCD) that generates signatures with a qualified certificate, that is, it is issued by certified devices and is accompanied by a certificate issued by a trusted EU provider, in accordance with the requirements established in the eIDAS Regulation, described above. A document containing a qualified signature provides full proof of the statements attributed to its author, in accordance with article 376 of the Civil Code and Decree-Law no. 12/2021, of February 9. Additionally, unlike AES, a QES requires in-person or video verification of the signer as a prerequisite in the case of video technology. All those who work in mediation should use the Digital Mobile Key or the citizen card to obtain their qualified signature at the lowest possible cost.

There is no doubt about the benefit/cost of the decision to massively standardize the adoption of this type of technological and legal instrument in the daily life of real estate brokerage or any other player in this complex market.

In mediation, with all the competition that exists, it actually seems to me to be an enormous competitive advantage.

Finally.

For those who may still doubt the legality of this type of solution, I remind you that, on average, only 3% of all contracts reach the litigation phase and I can say that I hope the day that any trusted provider in the European community can prove and guarantee the case law in this type of case, regarding the validity, legal and technological security of this type of process.

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