Conclusions and Decisions of the 2025 CGAP Meeting – An Overview

The conclusions and decisions adopted by the Council on General Affairs and Policy (CGAP) of the Hague Conference on Private International at its 2025 meeting, which ended today, have just been made available here.

Ongoing Projects

In the coming months, additional meetings will be convened of the Working Groups in charge of the Parentage / Surrogacy Project and the Jurisdiction Project, respectively.

Regarding the former project, CGAP noted the Aide-mémoire prepared by the Chair of the Working Group and welcomed the progress made by the group. To further develop provisions for a draft instrument and draft a final report of the work of the group, CGAP invited the Permanent Bureau, in addition to the April 2025 meeting, to convene one further meeting, possibly in the second half of 2025, with intersessional work as required, as well as, if
necessary, one online meeting before CGAP 2026. The CGAP conclusions and decisions reiterate that any work by the Conference in relation to private international law matters related to legal parentage resulting from surrogacy arrangements should not be understood as supporting or opposing surrogacy.

As proposed by the Permanent Bureau of the Conference (see the post published on this blog a few days ago), a written consultation process will be launched to gather feedback from operators regarding the instrument that will represent, in due course, the outcome of the Jurisdiction Project. Following the completion of the current work on the latter project, “the consideration of direct jurisdiction rules could be further developed in a separate and subsequent project, subject to CGAP’s decision”.

The work of the Expert Group on Central Bank Digital Currencies is also set to continue in the coming months.

New Normative Projects

CGAP decided to establish new expert groups to work on the private international law aspects of digital tokens and carbon credits. A more detailed background of the latter projects can be found here and here. A post published on this blog illustrated some of the private international law issues surrounding the operation of voluntary carbon markets

Post-Convention Work

Two Working Groups will be established to finalise, respectively, the Model Forms pertaining to Chapter II of the 1970 Evidence Convention and the Good Practices document relevant to the 1965 Service, 1970 Evidence, and 1980 Access to Justice Conventions. A Working Group will also be established to review and complete the work done by the Permanent Bureau on the application and interpretation of Article 2 of the 1985 Trusts Convention and on the institutions analogous to trusts, with a view to its publication.

Other Initiatives

CGAP welcomed, inter alia, the proposal of Morocco to host a Regional Office for Africa (ROAF). This is the third Regional Office of the Conference. The two others operate for Latin America and the Caribbean (ROLAC) and Asia and the Pacific (ROAP), respectively.