Summary for those in a hurry
The CMR Convention is an international text on the international transport of goods by road, ratified by the enlarged Europe (55 countries). Non-concrete goal: to standardize the conditions of contract. More concrete purpose: to describe the documents to be used to contract the transport and to detail the responsibilities of the carrier. The CMR Convention is as old as the ISO container and is humming along peacefully, but its little sister, the eCMR, has been in the works since 2008, has made a few test flights since 2017 without going off course and is slowly but surely stabilizing. It's not Mad Max, but it's a small road revolution and it's an opportunity to take stock in connection with eFTI, the sacrosanct interoperability and the scary multimodality. All this is not won, but it has the merit of spilling some ink.
The paper version: historical foundations
Origin
The Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road is one of the few remaining French-language acronyms in the field of international trade governed by the UN. Let's call it the CMR Convention. It is one of the Geneva Conventions, signed in 1956, substantially amended in 1978 on compensation and in 2008 on electronic consignment notes. It is still regularly adapted to new ratifications and to keep pace with the groundswell of dematerialization. Fifty-five countries have ratified the Convention, mainly in Europe, plus two countries in the Maghreb, five countries in the Middle East, and one country in Asia.
The main points of the Convention
Broadly speaking, the text acts like any other standard. It sets out concepts that are sometimes unifying and pragmatic, sometimes indigestible and hollow. More seriously, this type of text aims to lay the foundations for standardizing practices in a sector of activity. In this case, harmonizing contractualization in international road freight transport. For example, when it comes to defining the responsibilities between the carrier and its client.
Since we have already devoted ourselves to an in-depth analysis of the legal text, let's move on to the facts: Three copies of the CMR are required: (1) Shipper (2) Goods (3) Carrier. That's three times more stamps, much to the delight of customs officers everywhere.
Information is systematically required:
- Place and date of its establishment.
- Name and address of the sender.
- Name and address of the carrier.
- Place and date of collection of the goods and the intended place of delivery.
- Name and address of the recipient.
- Common name of the nature of the goods and the method of packaging, and, for dangerous goods, their generally recognized name.
- Number of packages, their specific marks, and their numbers.
- Gross weight or the quantity of the goods expressed in another way.
- Transportation-related costs (transportation costs, incidental expenses, customs duties, and other costs incurred from the conclusion of the contract until delivery).
- Instructions required for customs and other formalities.
- Indication that the transport is subject, notwithstanding any clause to the contrary, to the rules established by this Convention.
Others are required in the absence of a clause that would not subject the contract to the CMR Convention:
- Transshipment prohibited.
- Costs borne by the sender.
- Amount of the refund to be collected upon delivery of the goods.
- Declared value of the goods and the amount representing the special interest upon delivery.
- Instructions from the shipper to the carrier regarding insurance of the goods.
- Agreed timeframe within which transportation must be completed.
- List of documents given to the carrier.
Managing disputes and liabilities
In general, the carrier is liable for damage to the goods except in certain identified cases. These exceptions include insufficient information provided by the shipper on the bill of lading, irregularities in the documents involved in customs formalities, or damage caused by defective packaging. The carrier is required to verify the accuracy of the information provided on the bill of lading or to express reservations if there are no reasonable means of verifying it (packaging, customs seals, etc.).
If it is impossible to perform the contract under the conditions initially agreed, a series of measures may be taken. For example: immediate deposit of the goods, storage of the goods by a third party, or resale of the goods in the event of excessive storage costs.
In the event of compensation payments relating to the goods, the amount is calculated on the basis of the stock market price, the current market price, or the usual value of equivalent goods. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are used to cap the amount of compensation at 8.33 units of account per kg of missing gross weight. 1 SDR = €1.30 at present. SDRs are a unit of account used by the IMF; the gold franc was used until 1978.
Successive carriers exchange dated and signed receipts, and an additional copy of the consignment note must be issued to provide the identity of the second carrier. The IRU FAQ (see below) provides a clear overview of many relevant questions relating to disputes.
Additional protocols and developments
The 1978 protocol amended the calculation of compensation to switch from the gold franc to the SDR. This is a story about the Jamaica Accords, which is not directly relevant here.
The 2008 protocol accepts the eCMR on the same basis as the traditional paper CMR and lays a new blank foundation for new and modern constructions. The electronic version of the consignment note must meet the same requirements as the paper version and go beyond them by linking the consignment note and its signatory via electronic signature and guaranteeing the integrity of the information (no alterations). The constraints are described, but not how to comply with them.
Practical implementation
The CMR Convention represents the foundations, so the aim of the game is to build on top of it. This is what the IRU (International Road Transport Union) set out to do in 1976 by providing a model consignment note (waybill, consignment note, or CMR, to use the incorrect term), which has since been amended and is still in use today. The IRU specifies a fourth copy, known as the administrative copy, which is reserved for administrative procedures, and adds that the copy for the goods is assigned to the consignee of the goods.
From there, a world of case law opens up immediately thanks to the IDIT (Institute of International Transport Law), which lists disputes and court decisions relating to the CMR. There is something for everyone, all written in lively and highly informative technical and administrative jargon.
The electronic version:the ongoing digital revolution
The paper-based era has a bright future ahead of it, but the 2008 protocol ratifying the eCMR is attempting to take a further step into the era of smartphones, which we all rely on every single day. Whether we are truck drivers or technocrats. Everyone is now able to offer a solution for transcribing, sharing, and transferring bills of lading in electronic format.
The advantages are numerous and already well known: savings in time and money, security, centralization, transition to real time, dissemination. The first cross-border transaction took place between France and Spain, a first led by ASTIC (Asociación de Transporte Internacional por Carretera) and FNTR (Fédération Nationale des Transports Routiers) on January 19, 2017.
Recent developments and current initiatives
In January 2026, we are seeing a significant acceleration in the adoption of eCMR across Europe. In Denmark, the ITD is discussing the development of a solution that Danish speakers will be able to explore. Initiatives also exist in the Netherlands, Benelux, and Eastern Europe.
With the help of APIs, QR codes, and other DLTs, use cases have been tested. For example: a camera scans a truck's license plate at the border, sends the number to the customs database, which queries an eCMR operator's database to find out what's in the truck at the border. The customs officer then decides whether or not to carry out an additional check on this basis.
Interoperability:the major challenge for 2026
This is where our road transport sector joins its rail and river transport counterparts in a multimodal whirlwind within the eFTI. The multitude of solutions will have to comply with the requirements of interoperability, technological neutrality, data integrity, and certification.
Although the CMR Convention may be limited (if one wishes) to road transport, the complexity of case law and the handling of local specificities pose considerable challenges. Certain articles of the CMR Convention state "if the legislation of the country (...) allows it," highlighting the importance of the decree of November 9, 1999 in France. The current lack of federated networks gives us an idea of the considerable effort and virtuoso orchestration required to build an eFTI ecosystem on a European scale.
Trust and security issues
Until this ecosystem reaches a critical mass, it will be difficult to establish its legitimacy. The ramifications of the CMR with other conventions such as the ADR on the packaging and labeling of dangerous goods or the TIR regime, which aims to simplify customs documentation, are all existing phenomena that will need to be incorporated into the final ecosystem.
It will be necessary to be able to trust the third party that will process the data, and institutions in different countries will need to be able to interconnect their systems in order to exchange information in real time. Once a private third party becomes an eCMR operator, the players in the transport chain will delegate the management of commercial, operational, and confidential data to a platform that they do not own.
Once customs authorities decide to switch to using eCMRs, they will need to be able to ingest data from shared platforms or from a constellation of operators with whom carriers will work to create and edit eCMRs. The challenge will be to create a platform enabling intelligent document processing (IDP) in order to guarantee the accuracy of the data exchanged between the various systems in the transport chain.
Fun fact (or not): Postal, funeral and moving transportation do not fall under the CMR agreement.
