Draft 0.1.0-beta.4 VCRS 0.1.0-beta.3 VCRS 0.1.0-beta.2 VCRS 0.1.0-beta.1

About

Who writes VCRS and how it changes, what changed, its licence, and how to cite it.

01

About

4 sections

Governance

Who writes VCRS

Steddle drafts and maintains VCRS: Holly Thackwray and Mischa Sigtermans, for Steddle Group B.V., Amsterdam. Steddle builds and runs claimant registers for collective actions, so it has an interest in this standard. That interest is stated here and on every published version.

What Steddle never does under VCRS

  • Certify a register, or state that a register meets a level. An independent auditor checks a register (core, section 8) and the representative claims the level.
  • Make conformance depend on Steddle. The text, the schemas and the vectors are free to use, and a representative with a spreadsheet, a notary and an auditor can meet Level 1 without any Steddle product.

How the text is held to the law

  • Every Required item in an annex cites the statute or the published ruling it rests on, with its paragraph, and quotes it in the original language. An item this standard requires beyond the law stands in a table of its own, with the case law that gives the reason.
  • The core states no rule of law. It sets what a register must do to claim a level.
  • An annex may tighten the core and never loosens it.

Changes and versions

  • Every change is public, in this repository.
  • Versions follow Semantic Versioning, MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Before 1.0, a change to a grade rule or a level's conditions raises the minor, and an editorial correction the patch. A pre-release such as 0.1.0-beta.1 is a draft for review.
  • An export names the exact version it was produced under, and is checked against that version's schemas.
  • Each released version is published with a persistent identifier, so a filing cites a text that does not change.
  • CHANGELOG.md records what changed in each version.

Consultation

  • Comments arrive as issues in this repository, or by email to hello@steddle.com for anyone who prefers it. Each emailed comment is logged as an issue, with the sender's consent to be named or not.
  • A draft goes out for consultation to foundations, funders, defendants' counsel, auditors and academics before it is released.
  • Each annex names who wrote it and who reviewed it.

The review panel

Once a review panel is seated, it approves changes to the standard text. No operator of claimant registers, Steddle included, holds a majority on it. Until it is seated, Steddle publishes each change for comment before a release.

Changelog

[Unreleased]

Added

  • An example conformance statement, templates/conformance-statement-example.md: the template filled in for the example register, its parties and its auditor fictional, with the same statement as JSON.

Changed

  • The README says what VCRS is under a heading of its own, sets the grade of a record apart from the level the register as a whole claims, and links the governance, the changelog and the licence by name.
  • GOVERNANCE.md names the text, the schemas and the vectors as free to use.
  • The README and its banner say a register shows who stands behind the action, and that an independent auditor checks the count, which holds at every level.
  • The README's summary puts a record without an opt-in the annex requires at grade D, and names for each level the grades it counts and the grade it reports, as core 10 does.
  • The conformance statement sets active records at grade D apart from records not active, which are grade D too, and says how its rows add up.
  • The example register's represented claims are €31 500 000 to €39 000 000, as its method gives.
  • The self-assessment's question 9 covers residents the annex binds on an opt-in, as core 4.1 rule 8 and 4.6 do.
  • The declaration of core 4.6 is the declaration on parallel actions in the template, the annexes and the vectors.
  • Core 7: a register regenerated before a hearing holds every withdrawal, opt-out and exclusion up to its reference date.
  • Annex AT: no entity is admitted ad hoc for a single action, and the OGH rejected both appeals in provisional-measures proceedings as inadmissible.
  • Annex CZ: the court examines admissibility at any stage of the proceedings (§ 24 odst. 1), and checks the plaintiff's listing of its own motion.
  • Annex DE: the BayObLG tests similarity against the proof of entitlement, and signing up with the representative is no condition of the opt-in.
  • Annex FI: an electronic notice meets the written form without a signature where the Kuluttaja-asiamies is the claimant.
  • Annex NL: a count or a figure one court worked from is attributed to that court.
  • Annex PT: associations and foundations must meet LAP art. 3, and the TCRS recorded the point on jurisdiction as undisputed.
  • Wording across the core, the self-assessment, the annex template, the schema descriptions and every annex, for precision. No grade rule or level condition changes.

[0.1.0-beta.3] - 2026-10-22

Changed

  • The standard's address is vcrs.org: the citation and the addresses in core 13, each schema's $id and the README. 0.1.0-beta.1 and 0.1.0-beta.2 keep the addresses they were released under.

[0.1.0-beta.2] - 2026-10-21

Added

  • Annex AT (Verbandsklage auf Abhilfe), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • Annex DE (Verbandsklage under the VDuG), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • Annex BE (action en réparation collective), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • Annex IT (azione di classe and azione rappresentativa), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • Annex IE (representative action under the 2023 Act), each Required item cited to its section, rule or ruling.
  • Annex FI (ryhmäkanne under the ryhmäkannelaki), each Required item cited to its section.
  • Annex PL (postępowanie grupowe), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • Annex CZ (hromadné řízení), each Required item cited to its section or ruling.
  • The facts export states whether residents opt in in this action (opt_in_residents), where the annex leaves it to the court or an approved agreement ("action").
  • The facts export and the conformance statement state whether the action is brought under the forum's transposition of Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (action.directive, core 4.6 and 11.1). An annex may set opt_in_abroad to "directive": people abroad then opt in only in such an action.

Changed

  • Under an annex without an opt-in window, the facts export states no window and no channel (opt_in_opened_on, opt_in_closed_on, opt_in_channel); an export that states either meets no level (core 4.6).
  • The opt-in rule (core 4.1 rule 8, 4.6) also binds residents of the forum where the annex sets opt_in_residents; where both opt in, residence decides nothing. The annex key parallel_declaration_abroad is parallel_declaration, and the declaration goes with every opt-in.
  • Annex PT binds people abroad on an opt-in only in an action under Decreto-Lei n.º 114-A/2023, which covers actions on the provisions in Annex I of the Directive filed from 6 December 2023, and states the unclaimed-sums rule per regime.
  • Annex NL states the transitional rule: a claim covering events before and on or after 15 November 2016 is split, and the WAMCA and titel 14A Rv govern the later part (art. 119a Overgangswet nieuw Burgerlijk Wetboek; HR 2026:1551). NL-16 asks for class size and coverage per part.
  • Annex NL: after the appointment the court may re-test admissibility and need not supervise; NL-14's safe harbour covers outsourcing alone and asks for no tie through the board or a shareholding; NL-15 holds residence on the date the court fixes the class.

[0.1.0-beta.1] - 2026-10-20

The first draft for consultation: a core that holds in every jurisdiction, and annexes that hold what one jurisdiction's law requires.

Added

  • The core: grades A to D set by fixed rules, residence and opt-in from abroad, provenance, coverage against a stated denominator, the represented claims, the reference date, the independent check per level, the representative's control, three levels (Registered, Identified, Verified), the open format.
  • Annex NL (WAMCA) and Annex PT (ação popular and DL 114-A/2023), each Required item cited to its article or ruling.
  • JSON Schemas for the facts export, one record, and the conformance statement.
  • Test vectors for the core and each annex.
  • The self-assessment, a spreadsheet template and a conformance statement template.

Licence

The text of VCRS, its schemas and its test vectors are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0): anyone may share and adapt them, for any purpose, with credit to the source. The legal code is the licence itself, and the deed says it in short.

Citing

A filing cites the version, the core and the annex, at the version's own address, as core 13 sets out. Versions lists every released version.