The Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) has recently announced it prepared to revise the Convention concerning the International Carriage by Rail – COTIF. The convention was last revised in Vilnius in 1999. The revision will concern both the basic convention and its appendices. It will involve both amendments which fall within the competence of the Revision Committee and amendments which fall within the competence of the OTIF General Assembly, but nevertheless the revision seems to be rather limited in scope. The OTIF Revision Committee should meet during the second quarter of 2014. The OTIF General Assembly itself will take place in September 2015.
The International Rail Transport Committee (CIT) has revealed some of the amendments that CIT group of experts in this field believe opportune for the review of COTIF. Therefore, most of the suggestions released by CIT group of experts concern the replacement of the principle of functional equivalence between the electronic consignment note and the paper consignment note by specific provisions for the electronic consignment note. These specific provisions also give the electronic consignment note precedence over the paper one.
OTIF’s Secretary General François Davenne notes that COTIF’s rules (the CIM Uniform Rules and the CIV Uniform Rules) are most used in the international railway transport, but remained unchanged since 1999. Therefore, it is now time to make some changes to these appendices to bring them up-to-date, firstly to meet the requirements of the various stakeholders in international rail traffic and, secondly to take account of technical advances in the transport world.
In practice, with the exception of some changes to the COTIF Convention itself, which the Revision Committee cannot make and which have to be made by a General Assembly, the prime purpose of the Revision Committee is to modernize the CIM Uniform Rules. Over and above any suggestions which may be made by Member States and railway associations, the OTIF Secretariat will propose and support initiatives to update the CIM consignment process to allow it to benefit from the progress made in new technologies and in particular by giving the use of an electronic consignment note precedence over the use of a paper one. OTIF will also support all the actions proposed by members of the committee which are necessary in order to advance freight transport by rail.
Regarding the changes to the CIV Uniform Rules (for passenger transport), the OTIF Secretariat will take a little more time before deciding whether it is now the right time to change that appendix. Following the accession of the European Union to COTIF in July 2011 and because of parallel European Union regulations in this area, it is probably preferable for OTIF and for all users, passengers and even transport providers for OTIF to try to bring passenger law together into a single legal corpus. “We need a little more time to get passenger transport legislation generally accepted”, highlighted OTIF’s Secretary General in his note.
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