President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) sanctioned, with vetoes, this Tuesday (28) the project that obliges notaries to offer online service.
The proposal, originating from a provisional measure (MP 1085/2021), had 12 vetoes, but none change the main objective, which creates a unified platform —Serp (Electronic Public Records System)— to provide digital services to the population until 31 December. January 2023.
The measure was published in the Official Gazette (DOU) this Tuesday. The sanction and the vetoes of the president will be analyzed by the National Congress. The text involved great dispute and had more than 300 parliamentary amendments presented. In the end, it had expressive support in the Chamber, with 366 votes against 8.
Digitization is already a reality in 95% of services, according to a note released by Anoreg (Association of Notaries and Registrars) at the end of May. The centralization of orders will be Serp’s main novelty.
The measure creates the electronic system that aims to digitize the acts and procedures of notary services. People will be able to access them online.
The text also provides that it is possible to send and receive documents and titles, in addition to issuing certificates and providing information electronically. There will be a national central of records of titles and public documents, which will be responsible for storing the acts.
There are currently more than 13,000 notary offices throughout Brazil.
This system will be operated nationally by a non-profit legal entity and will be funded by a fund, which will receive contributions from the contributions paid by the registry offices.
Although the measure sets the maximum period for implementing the electronic system, the work schedule and the details of each stage will still be regulated by the CNJ (National Council of Justice).
Notaries that do not want to join the SERP will need to adopt their own infrastructure that communicates with the system and, consequently, with other registries. Interconnection will be mandatory.
The creation of the platform must be financed by the notaries themselves through the FICS (Fund for the Implementation and Costing of the Electronic Public Registry System), and each official letter will collect a quota to finance the service.
According to the then Secretary of Economic Policy at the Ministry of Economy and now Minister of Mines and Energy, Adolfo Sachsida, told Sheet in December, as the notaries “will have a gigantic reduction in administrative costs, need for physical space, personnel and administrative material, this will compensate for the creation of this fund (FICS)”.
THE Sheet sought in early June the Idec (Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection) and Procon (Foundation for Consumer Protection and Protection) to find out if the changes would lead to an increase in prices, but they did not manifest.
Prices are currently set by states.
The trend, however, is that digitization will reduce the work of intermediaries. Instead of asking forwarding agents, for example, the user himself can register a property or request a certificate. According to the entities, it is possible that the total price of the service will fall.
Among the vetoes in the measure, there are provisions that determine that the activity of notary of notes is compatible with that of auctioneer and that its activity of mediation, conciliation and arbitration would be remunerated according to state fee tables.
The government talks about market reserve to justify withdrawing part of the final text, in the first case. In the second, it alleges that the State cannot establish a table of fees, because the activities are not public services.
Bolsonaro also vetoed the section that extinguishes the earmarked assets — the segregation of the developer’s assets for a specific activity, with the aim of guaranteeing the continuity and delivery of units under construction to future buyers, even in the event of bankruptcy.
The government says the measure is against the public interest. “Because it extinguishes the affected assets when the purchase and sale is registered, that is, before the delivery of the property, removing from the developer’s competence its obligation of prompt delivery and generating a possible liability for indemnities for unfinished works, which can bring fragility to the business environment”, he says in the Official Gazette.
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