Presentation in Rome at UNIDROIT

The International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) is based in Rome, Italy. This NGO has 65 member states working in various working groups on the international standardisation of civil law. The Working Group on the Legal Nature of Verified Carbon Credits (VCC) passes around 50 representatives from numerous countries, typically from the academic world, but also occasionally from the respective ministries and practitioners. Numerous international organisations such as the World Bank also took part in the VCC advisory services.

UNIDROIT invited the spokesperson of the TOSCA project group to give a presentation in Rome on 2 April 2025. TOSCA is an interdisciplinary project group with 15 members, externally funded by the Hessian ZEVEDI. From Fulda, the project group includes Principle Investigators (PIs) Prof Dr Carsten Müller and Prof Dr Dominik Skauradszun with academic employees Leah Kling and Sebastian Böhning. Prof Skauradszun is the spokesperson for the project group. TOSCA recently completed the research project. The results will be published open access by De Gruyter.

In his presentation, Dominik Skauradszun compared the results of TOSCA with the draft principles that the UNIDROIT experts are currently advising on. TOSCA assumes that in the case of CO2 certificates tokenised on blockchains (VCC tokens), these tokens can be the subject of property rights and absolute rights according to German understanding and that these are transferred in a manner comparable to an assignment of rights. However, this is neither codified in the European Union (EU) nor in Germany and can only be derived from an interpretation of EU and national law. He explained why, following the outcome of TOSCA, services related to VCC tokens in the EU fall under the regulatory regime of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation(MiCAR). This new regulation also contains some civil law provisions, for example on insolvency protection for customers. The UNIDROIT Draft Principles would largely harmonise with MiCAR and in some cases even go significantly further, which in turn could be beneficial for the further development of MiCAR.

With the tokenisation of CO2 certificates, many countries around the world hope to be able to involve enterprises in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions and climate change more quickly, cost-effectively and transparently and to motivate them to make voluntary commitments.

The presentation held in Rome can be viewed here.