The Dutch authorities and the authorities of other countries
need to be certain about the status of each other’s documents.
It is often difficult to establish that status. It is impossible
to know precisely who the authorised officials in a country are,
what powers they have, and what a particular document ought to
look like. Legalisation confirms that a document was issued by
someone with the authority to issue it, and that the signatures
it bears are genuine. Some documents need to be signed by
several different authorities in order to be legalised. This is
called the legalisation chain. Some countries have entered into
agreements streamlining the legalisation chain. This means that
certain documents from one of the contracting states may be used
in another contracting state with only a single legalisation or
even none at all (mainly within Europe). The best-known
legalisation convention is the convention abolishing the
requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents, also
known as the Apostille Co