DARTE Rome 1.0 @ UNIDROIT

Co-organised by Mariana de la Roche Wills (BlackVogel) and myself, supported by the European Commission and held in collaboration with UNIDROIT and Bybit EU, we discussed the problem of private law issues lacking any harmonisation in the digital assets realm globally and also within the EU today. Please read the full report here.

UNIDROIT supports the harmonisation of the private-law frameworks for digital assets by creating the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law (link in the comments). Against this background, we discussed the following aspects:

🟠 Ignacio Tirado (UNIDROIT) highlighted in his welcome remarks that the UNIDROIT principles adopted a modest approach being convinced that digital assets are the new reality. 

🟠 Georg Harer (Co-CEO of Bybit and Head of Legal) outlined practical industry challenges due to the current lack of international harmonisation pointing to unsolved issues with how to safeguard clients assets when ownership is not even acknowledged in many countries, raising questions of who bears the losses in case of orphan blocks and how to ensure that clients' assets are safe in case of a CASP insolvency.

🟠 Tomáš Kozárek (Head of International Law Unit at Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic) outlined the current discussion of applying the concept of "control" according to the UNIDROIT principles by implementing an analogy to possession under Czech law. This sparked a discussion about the different national concepts of possession and risks and opportunities of leaning on traditional concepts.

🟠 Tecla Rodi (Policy and Regulatory Advisor at Ministero dell'economia e delle finanze) shared how Italy solved the challenges of developing private law solutions for digital financial instruments in alignement with the UNIDROIT Principles.

🟠 Dr. Joachim Schwerin (European Commission) closed today's DARTE session.

My sincere thanks to today's participants for the lively discussion highlighting the different perspectives🧡: Alessandro Malventano, Alexandru Stanescu, Andrea Sacchi, Angelo Maria Galiano, Antonio Lanotte, Antonios Papadimitropoulos, Åsa Dahlborn, Chiara Villani, Eesa Allie Fredericks, Eya Abid, Fatima Zahra Zaroui, Farangis Khasanova, Francesco Desantis Spasiano, Giulia Previti, Heinz Konzett, Irene Tagliamonte, Klim Omelchenko, Komil Rashidov, Kristijan Poljanec, Luca Lamanna, Luigi Cantisani, Mariolina Colomba, Megumi Hara, Natalia Alenkina, Nisrin S. A. Mahasneh, Paolo Maria Gangi, Rosa Giovanna Barresi, Rosanna Salonen, Salvatore Luciano Furnari, Satoru (Tomo) Yamadera, Tecla Rodi, Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, Timur Davlatov, Theodora Kostoula, Veni Arakelian, Vosijon Ergashev. 

Next stop: 📅 26 January 2026📍UNIDROIT, this time turning into the challenges for common law jurisdictions when adopting the UNIDROIT Principles.