Aruba and Asseco announce the establishment of a joint venture to build Europe's single market for certified communications

A dedicated company turns a shared vision into a concrete business commitment: developing a European interoperability hub open to all qualified providers

Rome, 28 October 2026 – Aruba S.p.A., one of Italy's leading players in cloud, data centre and digital services, and Asseco Data Systems, an Asseco Group company specialising in IT solutions and trust services, announce the establishment of a joint venture, aimed at creating a European exchange hub for the cross-border exchange of qualified electronic registered delivery services. The initiative marks a new step in the collaboration between the two operators and aims to establish a key building block of a European digital e-delivery infrastructure, bringing the experience gained in Italy with PEC and in Poland with e-Doręczenia to a European scale.

The new company will work on building an exchange hub designed to enable qualified trust service providers (QTSPs) to deliver electronic communications across borders through qualified electronic registered delivery services (QERDS), in accordance with the eIDAS framework. Initially open to all qualified trust service providers in the European Union, the infrastructure is also intended to serve as a gateway for non-European e-delivery providers. As a core component of Europe's sovereign digital infrastructure, the hub aims to overcome fragmentation between national systems and enable businesses, public administrations and citizens to exchange legally valid electronic communications across borders, supporting the needs of an increasingly global digital economy.

For businesses, public administrations and citizens, this development will make it possible to use interoperable certified communication services in dealings with parties in other European countries. This is a particularly significant opportunity for companies operating across borders that need to send contracts, documents and formal communications while being able to legally prove the delivery and receipt of messages, the identity of the parties involved, the sending and receipt of messages, and the integrity and confidentiality of the data. Removing the barriers between national systems could thus help simplify business processes and strengthen the competitiveness of companies in the single market.

The hub will be designed to work across different standards, technical solutions and manage evidence of dispatch and receipt among different providers, while the content of communications will remain with the sender's and recipient's providers. The infrastructure will also rely on data centres located in Europe, following a model that combines interoperability, information protection and European control over the management of certified communications.

This development is made possible by the eIDAS 2.0 Regulation, which allows qualified providers to agree on the interoperability of their respective registered delivery services. While not mandating it, the European regulatory framework enables this cooperation by granting qualified services specific legal presumptions regarding data integrity, the identity of sender and recipient, and the accuracy of the date and time of sending and receipt. The joint venture was created to turn this regulatory possibility into an openly governed and shared infrastructure accessible to qualified operators across the Union.

“The journey we began with Aruba in 2025 demonstrated that different national systems can interact with each other, in compliance with European rules” - commented Andrzej Dopierała, President of Asseco Data Systems. “Today, with the joint venture, we are turning our joint successful pilot into a dedicated project, with the aim of extending the model across the entire EU market. We are convinced that creating a solution which enables easy-to-use, cost effective and secure exchange of certified documents between different countries, will contribute to making European economy stronger and more competitive”.

“European rules make interoperability possible, but they don't make it happen: someone has to build it. That is exactly what we are doing with Asseco, whose expertise in trust services makes it a natural partner” - said Andrea Sassetti, CEO of Aruba PEC. “Nobody should have to change their mailbox, their software or their habits. Our job is to make different systems talk to each other and keep the complexity out of sight, so that sending a certified message to another European country is as simple as sending one at home. And this is not a club of two: the door is open to every operator that wants to contribute”.

The project is part of Europe's broader path towards greater digital sovereignty. Even today, many business communications are entrusted to platforms that do not provide the identification, integrity and delivery guarantees required of qualified trust services. Against this backdrop, building a European qualified registered delivery network represents a step towards a communication model based on common rules, legal guarantees and infrastructure located within the Union.

The joint venture is the evolution of the collaboration announced by Aruba and Asseco in May 2025, when the two companies successfully completed a proof of concept between Italy and Poland, demonstrating that two different national certified communication systems could interoperate. While that first pilot made it possible to overcome the technical differences between the two countries, the new company has been set up to extend the model beyond the bilateral relationship, creating the conditions for an open and interoperable European ecosystem. It is a development that aims to leverage Italy's experience with PEC, in widespread use for over twenty years, as a contribution to building a more integrated European digital market.

More info: https://paperless.asseco.com/en/european-e-delivery-interoperability-hub

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