Qualified electronic seal

A qualified electronic seal is an advanced electronic seal under eIDAS that gives EU-wide legal presumption of data integrity and origin for organisations.

A qualified electronic seal is an advanced electronic seal that the EU eIDAS Regulation defines for organisations (Article 3(27) and Article 35). It is created with a qualified electronic seal creation device, defined in Article 3(32), and based on a qualified certificate for electronic seals (Article 3(30)) issued by a QTSP. Since eIDAS 2.0, organisations can also use a remote qualified electronic seal creation device that a QTSP manages on their behalf (Article 3(23b) and Article 39a) - an increasingly common way for organisations to seal documents. It enjoys an EU-wide legal presumption of integrity and correctness of origin of the sealed data. Unlike a qualified electronic signature, a qualified seal does not carry the equivalent legal effect of a handwritten signature - Article 25(2) grants that effect only to qualified signatures - so it cannot replace a required personal signature. Whether a QTSP and its qualified seal service have qualified status can be checked against the EU Trusted List for the relevant Member State.

Organisations use qualified seals for high-value automated flows: e-invoicing, official registers, digital diplomas and machine-issued statements. Under eIDAS 2.0, electronic attestations of attributes issued to EUDI Wallets may be sealed with an advanced or, depending on the attestation type, a qualified seal - see electronic attestation of attributes (EAA) for the specific rules.