Electronic consignment note (e-CMR)

Delegate of CESMAD Slovakia Mgr. Juraj Kindl attended the meeting of juridical committee of IRU in Geneva by the information from magazine Kilometer. There were on the program also General conditions IRU for international road transport, the final document is visible in several languages on webpage IRU  http://www.iru.org.

There were also discussed multimodal transport and also mainly electronic consignment note. I would like to inform you about this:

Electronic consignment note (e-CMR) is used by the additional protocol to the Agreement CMR.

e-CMR is simplified – electronically agreed contract of carriage on the basis of electronic consignment note e-CMR that should be theoretically similar trustworthy as classical paper consignment note CMR.

e-CMR is used only in rare event up to now and there are many reasons why it is like this. The determining reason is that the additional protocol to the Agreement CMR was agreed and implemented to system of law only 7 countries: Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Czech Republic. e-CMR is most often used mainly in Benelux region. Company DSV normally use e-CMR in Denmark. Traditional critic is Germany by the way.

The next reason of limited use is nearly not existing suitable infrastructure of equipment for use of e-CMR (not only in business sector but also in state authority and organization), and it is mainly from financial point of view. This is typical also for Slovak Republic as was presented. There is no space for creation of other costs at the transport market of the most of all countries.

The next reason of limited use of e-CMR is impossibility of change of its content for example in case that there is some reservation from the driver. More over there is insufficient and at anytime possible access to the content of the e-CMR and also the process of electronic signature in the international point of view

It is supposed in the future that the use of e-CMR in practice will be more initiated or demanded by the biggest logistic companies and also by the biggest consignees of the goods (supermarkets) in spite of the fact that the additional protocol to the Agreement CMR will not be validated by the government of most of the countries. This assumption of the preferable use of by these subjects results of this that the administration processes are more and more in electronic form without the paper.

This tendency and the firs swallow from the use of e-CMR in our country confirm information from the portal eulogy.sk:

METRO Cash & Carry SR Is the first company in Slovakia that is using for stock receipts from the suppliers e-CMR in EDI format completed with the identification of the palettes through SSCC codes. They put this in the practice in pilot project in the communication with the company Henkel that was also the first supplier in Czech republic that use this communication. The professional guarantee of realization of this project became EDI provider and consolidator CCV CCV Informačné systémy

IRU wants to help with the creating of uniform infrastructure for e-CMR however meantime only on the basis of internet interface. They offer this possibility through application TIR-EPD and SafeTIR that are used for customs purpose TIR. These applications include also the data shown in consignment note and form the potential through the extension of these applications for possible though phased and voluntary universal use of e-CMR