EU-høring om elektroniske dokumenter for godstransport

EU-høring om elektroniske dokumenter for godstransport

Public consultation survey on electronic documents for freight carriage

Høring igangsatt av Kommisjonen 25.10.2017

Nærmere omtale

BAKGRUNN (fra Kommisjonens høringsnettside)

About this consultation
25 October 2017 - 18 January 2018

Objective of the consultation
The aim of this public consultation is to gather the views and concerns of all interested citizens, organisations and businesses on the use of electronic freight transport documents, in order to inform the Commission's analysis on the following key elements of the impact assessment:

• reasons why transport documents in electronic format are not as yet more widely used;

• how big may be the missed potential benefits;

• possible measures to support the wide use of electronic transport documents among all transport and logistics stakeholders; and

• expected impacts of these measures.

The questionnaire is built in a way to allow the non-initiated audience to voice their views.

Additional information

Digitalisation can significantly improve efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness in transport and logistics. The use of electronic instead of paper documents, in particular, is expected to bring important benefits in terms of simplified administration and cost savings. However, a majority of the documents used in freight transport operations are still issued, transferred and archived on paper. The European Commission is currently assessing options for a policy initiative having as objective the exploitation of the full potential of the digitalisation of transport documents for freight in all transport modes.

There is a large number of freight documents used during transport. For the purpose of its assessment, the Commission divided these documents into two categories: "transport documents" which serve as contract of carriage for the goods being transported, and "other freight documents" that may be required for the due completion of a transport operation. Such "other freight documents" include dangerous goods certificates, phytosanitary certificates, certificates of origins, waste declarations and the like.

Based on a preliminary analysis, the Commission decided to focus the initiative on the contract of carriage documents. These documents are those most commonly referred to as "transport documents" and are governed by specific international conventions. Depending on the transport mode concerned, they take the form of consignment notes, waybills or bills of lading.

The European Commission is also now assessing the current reporting formalities directive for maritime transport. Both these initiatives aim at supporting trade and transport by exploiting the benefits of digitalisation, notably in terms of business to government relations. Consistency will be ensured between these two initiatives.