The Political Declaration on establishing a unified Eurasian railway transport law was approved in November 2012 and the long-term goal consists in harmonizing the provisions of this legislation. All the other transport modes enjoy common legislation in international transport.
What would a common legislation mean for Eurasian railway transport? It would mean development and the introduction of an appropriate and efficient international legal transport system, it would facilitate the international trade of goods and services, it would also facilitate the development of new infrastructures on the routes China – Kazakhstan – Mongolia, China – Europe, Iran – Pakistan or the North-South Corridor and it would offer a fair development level for railway freight transport between the two continents.
In anticipation of the new unified legal framework at government level, the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) supports the railway and railway organisations involved in bringing about harmonized solutions on a contractual basis. Therefore, at the last meeting of the “Railway” Working Group on 9 November 2012, the proposed Political Declaration prepared by the Group of Experts was unanimously approved. The planned UNECE Declaration is to be signed on 26 February 2013 by the transport ministers involved and the European Union at the next meeting of the Inland Transport Committee. The Declaration is designed to express the relevant political will of the transport ministers responsible regarding the harmonisation of Eurasian rail transport law.
Under the approved Political Declaration, the above-mentioned transport ministers invite interested railway freight companies, other stakeholders and international railway organizations to pursue work on the development of optional model rules for Euro-Asian rail transport contracts (GTC EurAsia), show the data of the International Transport Committee.
This work should be in line with the principles of optionality, of providing uniform contracts, of being in line with the relevant provisions of the COTIF/CIM Convention and the SMGS Agreement and provide for a single (common) consignment note and, to the extent possible, a single liability regime.
Within the project to make the CIM and SMGS consignment notes legally interoperable, the International Rail Transport Committee (CIT) and the Organisation for Cooperation of Railways (OSJD) are accordingly working as fast as they can on the implementation of a comprehensive contractual framework to allow these new traffics to be moved simply in administrative terms but with complete legal certainty. The CIT and OSJD are coordinating their work closely with the UNECE.
A further step towards the consolidation of the legal interoperability has been taken with the set up of the Special Conditions of CIM/SMGS Liability (SC CIM/SMGS). These are standard provisions for liability in case of the loss of or damage to the goods. These special conditions replace the equivalent provisions in the separated CIM and SMGS, given that they are still optional, this will only be applied on a voluntary basis.
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