APEC’s Economic Committee endorses wider participation in the Apostille Convention
Following the successful outcome of the APEC Workshop on a Simplified Authentication Process for Production of Public Documents Abroad through the use of the Hague Apostille Convention, held in Medan, Indonesia, on 28-29 June 2013, which was attended by Deputy Secretary General Christophe Bernasconi and the Representative of the Hague Conference Asia Pacific Regional Office, Anselmo Reyes, the Chair of APEC's Economic Committee (EC), Mr. Raymond Greene (United States of America), expressly noted in his summary of the workshop "EC endorsement of wider participation in the Hague Apostille Convention". In particular, "the EC members noted that APEC-wide adoption of the Hague Apostille Convention would have a significant impact on the EoDB [Ease of doing business], reinforce institutional connectivity, and contribute to APEC's wider objective of trade and investment liberalization" (the Chair's summary is available as Document Number 2013/SOM3/023 via the Advanced Search option on http://mddb.apec.org/pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx; see in particular p. 3 and p. 6 of the summary).
The Conclusions and Recommendations of the workshop are currently being finalised and will be made available on the Hague Conference website in due course.