On 28 May 2026, the Guide on Best Practices for Electronic Business Registries was presented to the European business registry community during the Annual Conference of the European Business Registry Association (EBRA), held in Żejtun, Malta and hosted by the Malta Business Registry.
The Guide was introduced through a dialogue session between Ms Kateryna Bovsunovska, Legal Consultant at UNIDROIT, who joined remotely, and Mr Marco Vianello, Head of International Affairs at InfoCamere, a member of the EBRA Board, and a contributor to the Project.
The discussion was set against the backdrop of the conference’s theme “Business Registers in Transition: Sanctions, Transparency, and Innovation in a Digital Europe”. It began with the origins of the Project on Best Practices in the Field of Electronic Registry Design and Operation (BPER Project), tracing the work back to the Cape Town Convention and the 2021 Guide on Best Practices for Electronic Collateral Registries. It then turned to the structure of the twenty-four Critical Performance Factors (CPFs) and how they converge on a registry’s trustworthiness. The conversation also drew out the distinct but related concepts of transparency and trustworthiness, and considered how the Guide applies to registries at different stages of digital transformation, particularly in Europe. Finally, it addressed the practical uses of the Guide: as a self-assessment framework, a procurement reference, and a common vocabulary that facilitates cooperation among registries from different jurisdictions.
Printed copies of the Guide were made available to participants in Malta, affording the registry professionals, policymakers, and technology providers in attendance an early opportunity to consult the publication in full.
The dialogue preceded the official launch of the Guide, which took place the following day, 29 May 2026, as a side event to the 107th session of the UNIDROIT Governing Council, at the seat of UNIDROIT in Rome and online.
The BPER Project is undertaken under the auspices of the Cape Town Convention Academic Project (CTCAP), a joint initiative between UNIDROIT and the University of Cambridge, with the Aviation Working Group as founding sponsor. The Project is supported by the UNIDROIT Foundation and sponsored by Aviareto.
