As from 21 August 2022, the European Convention on the Abolition of Legalisation of Documents executed by Diplomatic Agents or Consular Officers, adopted on June 1968, applies in Latvia. Thereby, documents issued by officials at the diplomatic and consular missions of Latvia and other States parties to the Convention are mutually exempt from legalisation.
The Convention shall apply to documents which have been executed by diplomatic agents or consular officers of a State party to the Convention and which have to be produced either in the territory of, or to the diplomatic agents or consular officers of another State party to the Convention. Under the Convention, the States parties shall exempt from legalisation documents or certificates issued by officials at the diplomatic and consular missions of the parties.
Documents requested to be issued at Latvia’s diplomatic and consular missions abroad or foreign missions in Latvia to which the exemption from legalisation applies, for the most part, contain information about the fact of birth or death, a person being alive, various data from the Register of Natural Persons, for instance, name and surname, marriage, capacity to marry and marital status, divorce, residence address, nationality, and absence of a criminal record.
The Convention is open to signature by the member states of the Council of Europe and the non-member states that have been invited to accede to the Convention. The Convention has currently been ratified by 26 states: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.