Governments and businesses in Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) countries have come together in a workshop to discuss progress on eCMR, the digital protocol to the CMR Convention, the UN’s convention for international carriage of goods by road.
IRU and its members spoke on both accession to, and implementation of, the eCMR protocol at the event, jointly organised by ECO, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) this month.
Participants highlighted the importance of moving towards full digitalisation of transport documents, in particular following the pandemic, and called on authorities and international organisations to work together to implement eCMR across the ECO region as rapidly as possible.
Many ECO countries have already championed transport digitalisation projects in recent years, including successful digital TIR pilot projects. At the workshop they expressed a keen readiness to build on those experiences and drive eCMR implementation going forward.
Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan have already acceded to the eCMR protocol, out of ten ECO member states in total. IRU encourages all ECO member states to join the eCMR protocol and work with partner organisations to implement eCMR in the region.