Second meeting of the Experts’ Group on Carbon Markets
From 8 to 10 October 2025, the Experts’ Group (EG) on Carbon Markets held its second meeting. The meeting, held in hybrid format, had 70 registered delegates and other experts, representing 22 HCCH Members and six Observers, in addition to members of the Permanent Bureau (PB) of the HCCH.
Pursuant to its mandate (C&D No 18 of CGAP 2025), the EG made further progress on the study of the private international law issues arising from carbon markets, with a focus on contributing to the draft UNIDROIT Principles on the Legal Nature of Verified Carbon Credits, in order to provide input on an applicable law rule to be included in these Principles.
During the meeting, participants reached consensus on an intermediate submission to UNIDROIT containing comments on and an iteration of Principle 4 on applicable law. The intermediate submission to UNIDROIT, as agreed by the HCCH EG, seeks to clarify certain aspects of draft Principle 4, in particular, the scope of proprietary issues that should be governed by the same applicable law rule, and the appropriateness of addressing expressly what the provision is not meant to cover. Other areas will require more time for the EG to consolidate its views. They include a non-exhaustive list of items on which the EG reserved commentary and indicated that further work is needed at this stage.
The EG noted that it put forward a possible alternative to the draft text of Principle 4 of the UNIDROIT Principles in an attempt to clarify as well as simplify, while noting that the EG will continue to discuss and work on the applicable law rule or rules for proprietary issues in respect of carbon credits. The EG noted that these are important issues to not only get right, but also to get buy-in for from HCCH Members and their stakeholders. The proposed iterated text was conveyed to UNIDROIT at this juncture so that UNIDROIT can take the preliminary suggestions into account in determining the way forward for its work on draft Principle 4.
The UNIDROIT WG will submit comments and/or questions to the HCCH EG by mid-November. The EG will then discuss any comments or questions received from the UNIDROIT WG on this submission at its next meeting in December 2025, following which it will present a report on the progress of its work to CGAP in March 2026.
More information on the Carbon Markets Project is available on the HCCH website.