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The CIM Committee endorses the continuing digitisation within the CIT's freight traffic products
Complete digitisation of the CIT's freight transport products
As a result of the CIM Committee's work to include the provisions for the electronic formal report in the CIT Freight Traffic Manual (CIT20a/GTM-CIT), it has become clear that it will not be possible to fully satisfy the need for greater digitalisation if work is restricted solely to the electronic formal report. At the 31st meeting of the CIM Working Group in December 2021, it was agreed that digitisation of the GTM-CIT worksheets would continue and that a description of the individual worksteps and digital processing would be included in the CIT Freight Traffic Manual.
The proposal for the continuing digitisation of the CIT's freight transport documents presented by the GS CIT was adopted unanimously by the CIM Committee and will be implemented by the CIM Working Group during 2022.
How the CIM consignment note deals with new carriage models
An increasing number of different carriage models is being used for cross-border rail carriage by freight traffic undertakings. As a result, it has become necessary to include appropriate entries in the CIM consignment note. An ad hoc subgroup of the CIM Working Group, consisting of representatives of DB Cargo, PKP Cargo, RCA, SBB Cargo, GS CIT and RailData, examined and investigated the various models in detail and identified their order management functions within the freight traffic systems of CIT members.
With the aid of visualisations prepared for the electronic consignment note during data interchange in the ORFEUS system, the results have now been included in a CIT circular letter that the GS CIT will send out to CIT members as soon as it has been approved by the CIM Committee.
New CIT guide to rail and inland waterway traffic law
Using the CIT guide CMR-COTIF/CIM-SMGS as its template, the GS CIT finalised the comparison table between rail law and inland waterway law in 2021. The table contains direct comparisons of the legislation on the carriage of goods by rail (COTIF/CIM) and the carriage of goods by inland waterway (CMNI[1], CLNI[2] and the Athens Convention[3]). Comments on the individual articles complete the guide. The GS CIT has also prepared a synthesis of the individual findings of the comparative table, which summarises and clarifies the conclusions contained in the comments.
Both of these documents have been published as new CIT products in the multimodality section of the CIT website. The CIT Guide will be used as the basis for the development of a checklist for boilerplate contracts to be used for multimodal rail/inland waterway traffic.
The effects of the EU Customs Code on CIT's freight traffic products
The simplified transit procedure for rail will be phased out by the end of 2023 (if no extensions are granted) in the Member States of the European Union (EU) and the parties to the "Convention on a common transit procedure EU-EFTA". The timing will vary from country to country and will depend on the upgrading of the national IT customs software for NCTS[4] Phase 5. With the end of the simplified transit procedure, the CIM paper-based consignment note with box 58b ticked will no longer be considered a valid customs transit declaration and will thus lose an important customs-related functionality.
A subgroup of the CER working party on customs questions, with the active participation of the GS CIT, has been looking into the question of what additional effects the end of the simplified transit procedure will have on the CIM consignment note, in particular, which fields or data record components that have previously been relevant to customs will become superfluous but should nevertheless retain their significance. The results of this work will be submitted for approval at the next meeting of the CIM Committee in 2023.
The 26th session of the CIM Committee is scheduled for 23 March 2023 at the CIT headquarters in Bern.
[1] Budapest Convention on the Contract for the Carriage of Goods by Inland Waterway (CMNI) of 22 June 2001, in force since 2 July 1961.
[2] Strasbourg Convention of 2012 on the Limitation of Liability in Inland Navigation (CLNI 2012) of 4 November 1988, completely revised on 27 September 2012.
[3] Athens Convention relating to the carriage of passengers and their luggage by sea of 12 December 1974, in force since 28 April 1987.
[4]All EU Member States and the contracting parties to the Convention on a Common Transit Procedure, as well as Liechtenstein, San Marino and Andorra are involved with the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS).