The reform will replace obsolete rules that date back a quarter of a century. The bill's authors took this opportunity to give the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg very ambitious new rules.

Indeed, the major obstacle to the development of electronic archiving lies in the legal uncertainty inherent to the destruction of originals, in particular the fear that the copies' integrity could be subsequently challenged. The solution lies in the establishment of a legal presumption of the copies' conformity to the originals.

This presumption is groundbreaking as it breaks with a 2000-year old tradition of writing prevalence. This tradition had already been dented with the development of electronic signatures in the 2000s. It will now be challenged even more with a change in the scope of application of a Civil code provision. Article 1333 of the Civil code indeed allows a judge to require the production of an original when a copy is provided by a party. This provision is dangerous to the extent that it creates a situation where the judge can decide to have the adverse party's original prevailing over one's copy. This is a significant cause of legal uncertainty for those who decide to electronically archive their documents and destroy the originals. With the reform, article 1333 of the Civil code will no longer apply to electronic archives.

In order to benefit from the presumption of conformity to the original, businesses will have to use a provider that is certified and recognised by the Luxembourg State, called dematerialisation and preservation provider (better known by the French acronym "PSDC"). If, due to its size or the nature of its activity, a business reaches a critical mass that renders this profitable, it can also opt for becoming a PSDC itself and allow its copies (as well as those it will create for other entities of its group) to benefit from this presumption.

Businesses can choose neither to use nor to become a PSDC. In this case, however, their archives will not benefit from the legal presumption and they will have to demonstrate (eg in the event of a dispute) that they have created them respecting certain technical and organisational conditions that allow to guarantee that archives are lasting and faithful copies of the originals. These conditions will be laid down in a grand-ducal regulation.

Businesses will determine their archiving strategy based on their needs and the nature of their archives, and can even decide to use a PSDC only for the archives which have a crucial probative value.

Financial sector professionals (subject to professional secrecy rules) will have the possibility to entrust the creation and preservation of their archives to two new types of so-called "support PFS": the dematerialisation PFS and the preservation PFS.

Finally, it should be noted that this reform will not concern mere storage activities that do not consist in the preservation of copies with an integrity warranty. Simple storage without added value (eg usual cloud computing storage) will thus not be affected.

It is expected that the reform will be implemented in the course of 2013.