Are electronic signatures legal in Portugal?

Decree-Law 12/2021

Decreto-Lei n.º 12/2021, de 9 de fevereiro took effect 30 days after publication and replaced Decree-Law 290-D/99, Portugal's original law on electronic documents and digital signatures. It ensures eIDAS is carried out in Portuguese law and governs the validity, effect and evidentiary value of electronic documents (art. 1). Article 3 sets the rules that matter for contracts.

• Written form. An electronic document satisfies a legal requirement of written form when its content can be represented as a written declaration (art. 3(1)).
• Qualified signatures are equivalent to a handwritten signature on paper and create presumptions that the signer is the holder (or an authorized representative), meant to sign, and that the document hasn't changed since (art. 3(2)).
• Force as evidence. A document with a qualified signature has the evidentiary force of a signed private document under article 376 of the Civil Code (art. 3(5)).
• A revoked, expired or suspended certificate counts as no signature at all (art. 3(4)).

Simple and advanced signatures

Portugal leaves room for other methods. Article 3(9) says the qualified-signature rules don't stop the use of other means of identification or integrity, including other kinds of electronic signature, if the parties adopted them in a valid agreement on evidence or the person the document is used against accepts it. Otherwise, documents that don't use qualified trust services are assessed under the general law (art. 3(10)). eIDAS article 25 also bars a court from refusing them only because they're electronic.

In practice that means a simple electronic signature works well for a contract whose terms include the parties' agreement to sign electronically, and the evidence of who signed and when carries the weight if it's ever disputed.

Property sales and wills

• Real estate. A sale of real property is valid only if made by public deed (escritura pública) or by an authenticated private document (Civil Code art. 875).
• Wills. The common forms are the public will and the closed will (testamento cerrado), both involving a notary (Civil Code art. 2204 and following).

Where SignMaster fits

SignMaster provides a simple electronic signature, not a qualified one, so it relies on article 3(9) and the general rules rather than the presumptions in article 3(2). Put the agreement to sign electronically in your contract terms; every SignMaster signer also confirms it before signing. Signers can read the signing page in Brazilian Portuguese, and the signed PDF includes a certificate of completion with each signer's email, IP address and timestamps, plus a SHA-256 fingerprint.