Neutralization of Transport Documents in Road Transport

Abstract

In 1956 there was a significant step in international road freight transport – conclusion of Convention on the contract of carriage in international road freight transport (CMR Convention), the basic purpose of which was to unify the rules in the international transport of goods and thus promote the development of international trade. From a practical point of view, this was very important for both carriers and transporters. The Convention describes the most important document in the carriage of goods – the CMR consignment note.Recently, the term «neutralization» has been used in connection with the CMR consignment note, which is considered as an interference with the system of functioning of transport documents, which aims to obscure the actual movement of the consignment during transport. At the same time, neutralization of the consignment note is not so much contrary to legal norms as it can lead to undesirable consequences for carriers. For this reason, the question of whether it is possible to neutralize the CMR consignment note in accordance with the current rules and whether the neutralization of the CMR consignment note does not violate the functionality of the existing system is relevant. Therefore, the objective of this work is to study the reasons and methods for neutralizing CMR consignment notes, as well as options for handling neutralized consignment notes.Considering that neutralization of the consignment note has become a relatively common practice and means the exchange of original consignment notes or transport documents with other consignment notes or transport documents, canceling the actions of the first consignment note, in the article the authors, based on their own research, identified the possibilities of using the neutralization of the CMR consignment note in practice for certain types of goods, routes of the most frequent use, as well as the risks of these procedures in road transport.