eFTI: An Explanation of the European Regulation on Electronic Transport Information

eFTI (electronic Freight Transport Information) is European Regulation (EU) 2020/1056, which requires the authorities of Member States to accept, as of July 9, 2027, freight transport information transmitted electronically via certified platforms. It applies to road, rail, waterways, and air transport. For carriers, freight forwarders, and shippers, it does not make digital submission mandatory: it gives them the right to no longer present paper documents during an inspection.

Even today, inspections on roads, railways, or waterways are often conducted based on a printed waybill, dangerous goods documents, or cabotage documentation. Each country has its own practices, and an electronic document accepted in France is not necessarily accepted in Germany or Italy. The eFTI puts an end to this fragmentation. Here is the relevant text, the exact timeline, and how to prepare for it.

What is eFTI?

eFTI stands for" electronic Freight Transport Information." The term refers to both:

• Regulation (EU) 2020/1056 of the European Parliament and of the Council of July 15, 2020, which entered into force in August 2020;
• the technical ecosystem it is establishing: certified eFTI platforms, certified service providers, a common dataset, and national access points for authorities.

Its goal is simple: to ensure that regulatory transportation information, when made available electronically in accordance with the rules, is accepted by any EU authority without requiring a paper copy.

What does Regulation (EU) 2020/1056 say?

What the eFTI Covers

The regulation applies to the information that must be provided to the authorities, as required by law, for the transport of goods within the territory of the Union by road, rail, inland waterways, and air. This includes the information required by the European regulations listed in Annex I, such as those concerning road cabotage, combined transport, the transport of dangerous goods, or the shipment of waste. Member States may also use it for national requirements.

Specifically, this refers to the information currently found on the waybill, the dangerous goods transport document, or the supporting documents for a cabotage operation: shipper, consignee, loading and delivery locations, nature and quantity of the goods, vehicle, etc.

What the eFTI Does Not Cover

This is a point that is often misunderstood, even in many articles:

• Maritime transport is not covered. Maritime formalities fall under a different framework: the European Maritime Single Window Environment (EMSWe, Regulation (EU) 2019/1239).
• Customs declarations are not affected. Customs authorities have their own electronic systems (in France, DELTA; at the European level, ICS2, NCTS, etc.). For more information, see our article on the changes introduced by DELTA IE.
• The regulation does not create any new reporting requirements. It does not change what must be reported, only how it can be presented.
• It does not govern transactions between businesses. The relationships between the shipper, carrier, and consignee (order, proof of delivery, billing) remain unregulated.

eFTI: Who is required to use it?

This is the most frequently asked question, and the answer is clear: eFTI is mandatory for government agencies but optional for businesses.

In other words, no one will force you to stop using paper in 2027. But starting on that date, a government agency will no longer be able to refuse information submitted electronically under the eFTI framework. This is what finally makes full digitization a realistic possibility on a European scale.

The eFTI Schedule, from 2020 to July 2027

The eFTI timeline has often been misrepresented, with implementation listed as “August 2024.” Here are the actual milestones, according to the European Commission.

How does eFTI work?

The system is based on four building blocks.

1. eFTI platforms. These are software systems (TMS, e-CMR solutions, logistics platforms) in which companies record transportation information. To be recognized, they must be certified by an accredited organization.
2. eFTI service providers. They operate these platforms on behalf of companies. They, too, must be certified.
3. TheeFTI Common Data Set. It defines the standardized fields and data subsets corresponding to each regulatory requirement. It ensures that any regulatory authority, regardless of the country, can access the same information in the same place.
4. National access points (eFTI Gates). Each Member State establishes a gateway that allows its officials to query the certified platforms.

During an inspection, the driver or operator provides a unique transaction identifier (for example, in the form of a QR code). The inspector uses this to access information on the platform through the national access point. Authorities do not have unrestricted access to the data: they may only view it during an inspection, and each access is logged.

eFTI, e-CMR, eBL: What Are the Differences?

These three terms are often confused. They are complementary but do not serve the same purpose.

In practice, eFTI and e-CMR are used together. An e-CMR is a business-to-business document; eFTI ensures that an authority in any EU country will agree to verify the information it contains, provided that the information is made available through a certified platform. For the maritime sector, see our article on the eBL and FIATA’s vision.

What are the benefits for carriers, freight forwarders, and shippers?

These regulations also change the way freight forwarders and other professionals in the industry carry out their day-to-day work. 

• Less paper and less data entry. Information is no longer printed, transported, and then re-entered: it is shared once, in the form of data.
• Faster inspections. The agent accesses the data directly instead of reading and verifying paper documents, which are often incomplete or illegible.
• A single set of rules across the entire Union. No more electronic documents that are accepted in one country but rejected in a neighboring one.
• Significant savings. The European Commission estimates that the logistics sector will save approximately 1 billion euros per year once the system is fully operational.
• Higher data quality. A common dataset requires structured fields, which reduces transcription errors.

How to Prepare for the eFTI: 5 Steps

1. Map your regulatory shipping documents. Waybills, dangerous goods documents, cabotage records, waste transfer documents: What documents do you generate, for which shipping routes, and in which countries?
2. Check where your data is stored. Is it entered into a TMS, received as a PDF via email, or scanned? eFTI information must be structured—it cannot be locked inside an image.
3. Check with your publishers. Does your TMS or e-CMR solution plan to become a certified eFTI platform, and by when?
4. Ensuring Data Quality. Incomplete or inconsistent information on an eFTI platform poses the same problem as an erroneous paper document—with the added issue of traceability. See our article on ensuring document reliability.
5. Launch a pilot program before July 2027. The voluntary phase, which begins in January 2026, is the right time to test a flow with a transport partner and a target country.

The Real Challenge of eFTI: Data Quality

The eFTI addresses the issue of data acceptance by authorities. It does not address the issue of data generation. However, in most transportation and freight forwarding companies, a large portion of the information still arrives in the form of documents: invoices, packing lists, shipping orders, scanned CMRs, PDF bills of lading, and emails.

To populate an eFTI platform, this information must be extracted, standardized, and consistent across documents: the weight stated on the waybill must match that on the packing list, the recipient must match the one on the order, and the UN class must match the description of the goods. This is precisely what OCR alone cannot guarantee (see “OCR and Document-Based AI: What Are the Differences?”).

That’s where Docloop comes in. Our document AI extracts data from your shipping documents with 99 to 99.5 percent accuracy, using standardized data models such as those from eFTI and DCSA. It then reconciles the documents within the same file to flag inconsistencies before they are transmitted (see “What Is Document Reconciliation?” and “How to Detect Inconsistencies Between Invoices, Packing Lists, and Bills of Lading?”). The data is fed back into your TMS via API: eFTI then becomes an output format, not a data-re-entry task.

‍