UNCLOS and the Challenge of Private Law in Offshore Project Finance

Abstract

This article analyses the legal interface between the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and private security law in offshore project finance, focusing on offshore wind in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Because the EEZ confers functional sovereign rights rather than territorial ownership, classical land-based mortgage concepts cannot operate over the seabed. A comparative assessment of Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium demonstrates functional convergence: creditor protection is achieved not through in rem rights over maritime space, but through corporate and contractual security structures such as share pledges, receivables assignments and step-in rights. While maritime registration may be available for certain floating installations, it remains exceptional. Against the backdrop of declining intra-European Union investment treaty protection, bankability increasingly depends on domestic administrative stability and precise contractual risk allocation. The emerging model is a compliance-embedded, functionally designed private law of the EEZ that reconciles regulatory integrity with capital mobilisation for the energy transition.