Apostille Certification of Documents legalized for certification in the UK and Northern Ireland for Cypriot (Cyprus) authorities.

An Apostille certification is the verification of the authenticity of a signature on a document when presented in another country, the position-role of the person signing the document, and the validity of the stamp.

When a document has received an apostille certification, it effectively means it has been certified, thus verifying the genuineness of the signatures and the seal and can be presented in every country that acknowledges the Apostille. The authority acknowledging the apostilled document, must then accept the seals and signatures as authenticated without any further diplomatic or consular legalization.

The Apostille certificate may be issued either by the country from which the document is prepared or another country where the document will be presented. For example, a POA may be prepared in Cyprus and apostilled within the United Kingdom or visa versa. 

The Apostille certification was introduced at the Hague Convention (HCCH – Hague Conference on Private International law) – which essentially abolished the requirement of legalising Foreign Public Documents, known as the Apostille Convention or the Apostille Treaty. Under the Hague Convention, the contracting countries, agreed to acknowledge public documents issued by other contracting countries, as long as these document are verified by an internationally acceptable form of verification known as “apostille”  

The Apostille treaty specifies the conditions that an official seal (e.g. notary public) on a document, authorised in one of the countries endorsing the Apostille convention, can be duly signed and certified for legal purposes in all of the other engaging countries. Thus, two countries adopting the Apostille convention, essentially require only one document to be certified to prove its validity, and removes the necessity for a double certification, i.e. both by the issuing and the accepting country.

Regarding a Cypriot document that requires apostille certification within the UK and Northern Ireland, and the USA (United States of America) can be undertaken in the following locations: