EU Trusted Lists

Under the Regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS Regulation), national trusted lists have a constitutive effect. In other words, a trust service provider and the trust services it provides will be qualified only if it appears in a trusted list. Users, including citizens, businesses and public administrations, will benefit from the legal effect associated with a given qualified trust service only if the latter is listed as qualified in the trusted lists.

Article 22 of the eIDAS Regulation obliges Member States to establish, maintain and publish trusted lists. These lists should include information related to the qualified trust service providers for which they are responsible, and  information related to the qualified trust services provided by them. The lists are to be published in a secured manner, electronically signed or sealed in a format suitable for automated processing.

Trusted lists are essential in ensuring certainty among market operators as they indicate the status of the service provider and of the service at the moment of supervision. They aim at fostering the interoperability of qualified trust services by facilitating the validation of eSignatures and eSeals and more. 

Member States may add trust services other than the qualified ones in the trusted lists, on a voluntary basis. However this is only at national level, and it must be clearly indicated that they are not qualified according to the eIDAS Regulation.

In order to allow access to the trusted lists of all Member States, the Commission makes available to the public, through a secure channel to an authenticated web server, the trusted lists as notified by Member States, in a signed or sealed form suitable for automated processing.