A coalition of industry groups for goods transport have launched a technical expert group to advance logistics sector uptake of eCMR, the digital protocol to the UN’s CMR Convention that governs legal and commercial standards in road freight.
First adopted in 1956, CMR is the United Nations Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road, which establishes uniform and mandatory rules for international road freight contracts. CMR harmonizes the rights and obligations of the sender, carrier, and consignee, ensuring legal certainty, transparency, and predictability.
Until recently, CMR notes were only in paper form, but supporters of eCMR say it is now time to go digital, according to IRU, the Geneva, Switzerland-based world road transport organization. The group says that eCMR speeds up invoicing, increases transparency and visibility, and supports compliance with eFTI, the EU’s new digital freight framework.
Accordingly, IRU has led an effort to create an expert group, which includes eCMR solution vendors FIELDEAS, Pionira and TransFollow; digital security and services firm IN Groupe; and FIATA, the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations.
Given the high degree of fragmentation between existing offerings, IRU says the group’s primary focus is to improve interoperability among eCMR solutions, helping transport operators, shippers, freight forwarders, and authorities to seamlessly exchange information.
Specifically, the group will develop a new, open, scalable and global interoperable B2B industry standard approach, fully compliant with the CMR Convention, the eCMR protocol, and UN functional specifications for operationalising eCMR.
Live testing will begin later this year with real users. The group aims to expand to other solution vendors to further strengthen the standard as it is rolled out.
“Logistics needs practical and interoperable digital solutions that work across systems and borders. This expert group is an important step towards making eCMR simpler, more scalable, and easier to implement,” IRU Senior Director for Strategy and Development Vincent Erard said in a release.
