2/26
40th Meeting of the CIT CIM Working Group
Under the chairmanship of Carola Folch von Sydow (DB) CIT’s main freight working group took important decisions for the future at its first meeting in late June 2026 at CIT premises in Bern. The CIM Working Group is a focal point of the CIT freight experts on the interface between law and operations.
Global Rail Freight
On the freight agenda, the CIT General Secretariat (GS) focused primarily under the first agenda item on projects featuring the active involvement of CIT in the implementation of the UNECE Convention on the Contract for International Carriage of Goods by Rail (URL), as well as on CIT’s future work within the framework of the ToS (Team of Specialists) to support the development of the URL Consignment note. The URL consignment note is a core area of expertise for CIT, which is why UNECE has invited CIT to nominate experts in this field. The URL Convention was adopted by UNECE on 17 November 2023 delivering one legal regime, one contract, one consignment note, and one liability regime across the CIM and SMGS systems. It is an opt-in instrument and adds a powerful commercial option without dismantling existing legal frameworks. The Convention needs just five Contracting Parties to enter into force; four states have signed (Togo, the Netherlands, China, Germany) and one (Kyrgyzstan) has acceded.
New CIT freight products in the digital environment
The CIT GS further debriefed about the new products for freight transport in a context of changing needs for the sector. A first step has been taken with the drafting of a new standardised model contract for subcontracted carriage. This will now be complemented by a self-standing flexible standardised clause from 1 July 2026. These new CIT freight products should support members in a context of further digitalisation and implementation of the new TSI Telematics (TEL TSI), which are also at the centre of CIT work in the field of freight transport, as the adapted data exchange could have an impact on the electronic consignment note. The CIM consignment note as a potential eFTI data source for a modern electronic CIM consignment note (CIM eCN) contains much of the structured data required by public authorities, including for example consignor and consignee information, goods descriptions, wagon and route data, dangerous goods references, customs-related data, and timing/location information. In this regard, the CIT Freight Document GLV-CIM (Consignment Note Manual) provides in its appendixes for functional specifications the complete content of the eCIM Consignment note.
Next steps
In 2027, the CIT GS will further focus on a user-friendly rerelease of the most frequently used CIT products, with a view to making them more easily applicable for the practical needs of CIT members and improving their readability. CIT is also preparing legal solutions and multimodal products at the interface between rail and maritime transport. Accordingly, at CER’s request, CIT has prepared selective and practical examples of responses to the CER survey, addressing these issues from a legal perspective. The CER position paper will be published in September 2026, once the responses to the questionnaire have been collected and analysed.
With regard to the revision of the COTIF Uniform Rules for freight and wagon law at OTIF level, the CIT General Secretariat provided information on the recently-held 9th session of the Ad Hoc Committee on Legal Affairs and International Cooperation, in particular on the status of the discussions concerning Article 7 of the CUV Uniform Rules (liability for damage caused by a wagon) and the proposals for digitalization of the CIM contract and transport documents under Article 6 of the CIM Uniform Rules (see the dedicated article in this issue of CIT NEWS).