International Construction Law Review
THE UNIDROIT PRINCIPLES AND FIDIC CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS*
Christopher R Seppälä**
Independent arbitrator and counsel, Paris
There can be few norms, rules or standards in international commercial contracts that better complement one another than the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts (the “UPICC”), on the one hand, and the forms of international construction contract published by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (commonly known by its French acronym of “FIDIC”),1 on the other. The UPICC set forth model rules for international commercial contracts whereas FIDIC’s forms provide a standard for international construction contracts to emulate. The UPICC have already influenced FIDIC’s forms, and it would only be natural that these two sets of rules or norms should continue to influence and contribute to the development of the other, as will be shown in answer to the questions below.
I. WHO ARE UNIDROIT AND FIDIC?
Unidroit or, to use its full name, The International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, is an independent intergovernmental organisation established on the basis of a multilateral agreement, the Unidroit Statute, and has its seat in Rome, Italy. Unidroit has 63 Member States drawn from all five continents and represents different legal, economic and political systems as well as different cultural backgrounds. Its purpose is to study needs and methods for modernising, harmonising and coordinating private and in particular commercial law as between States and groups of States and to formulate uniform law instruments, principles and rules to achieve those objectives.2
* This paper was presented at the UNIDROIT “Thirty Years of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts: Past, Present and Future Relevance” conference held in Rome, 6–7 May 2024 and was published along with other conference papers in a book with the same title and the subtitle “Acts of the Conference to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the adoption of the UNIDROIT Principles (Rome, 6–7 May 2024)”, ISBN 978-88-86449-57-1, UNIDROIT 2025.
** Legal Advisor to the FIDIC Contracts Committee and author of The FIDIC Red Book Contract: An International Clause-by-Clause Commentary, Wolters Kluwer, 2023, which cites frequently to the UPICC.
1 FIDIC stands for Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils.
2 See www.unidroit.org (last accessed 28 May 2025).
266