Serbia has become the 43rd country to join eCMR, the digital protocol to the United Nations CMR Convention, following three of its Western Balkans neighbours: Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro.

This is a major step in Serbia’s transition to fully paperless road freight. It creates the legal foundation for using electronic consignment notes in international road transport.

With around 280 million international transactions taking place every year, CMR is the world’s most widely used road transport document.

CMR, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, provides legal certainty, standardises documentation, and protects both operators and consignors.

By digitalising consignment notes, eCMR builds on these advantages by:

• Reducing administrative burdens
• Eliminating paper documents
• Accelerating invoicing processes
• Improving transparency and operational efficiency across supply chains

eCMR also supports compliance with eFTI, the EU’s new digital freight framework.

IRU and industry partners have launched a new technical expert group to drive the uptake of eCMR.

Led by IRU, the expert group includes eCMR solution vendors FIELDEAS, Pionira and TransFollow; digital security and services firm IN Groupe; and FIATA, the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations.

Given the high degree of fragmentation among existing offerings, the group’s primary focus is to improve interoperability among eCMR solutions. This will help operators, shippers, freight forwarders and authorities to seamlessly exchange information.