The consignment note is electronic

Fourteen years after the launch of document digitization, Italy ratified the Geneva Protocol. It will allow the dematerialisation of travel documents and more precise control of abusive cabotage. But it took the Recovery and Resilience Plan to unblock it

Technologies run fast. And, once adopted, they allow you to operate even faster. But, as a sort of retaliation, adopting technologies, at least in Italy, is a long, slow and complicated process. On 17 April, the Council of Ministers approved a bill for ratification for the adoption also in our country of the digital waybill for road haulage, the so-called e-CMR which will have to become operational within the next year . 14 years have passed since that February 2008 in which the Protocol that allowed the creation and management of the electronic CMR was added to the international convention in Geneva. It entered into force three years later and has so far been adopted by 30 countries, the latest being Germany. Being in good company, however, does not absolve us from a three-fifteen-year delay in adopting a universally acclaimed measure, because, as recalled by Manuel Scortegagna, CEO of Scortrans, vice president of Fedespedi in charge of land transport, «it simplifies and speeds up the logistics chain, makes the transport documents safer, strengthens the validity of the transport document also for tax purposes and finally favors the interoperability of the data».

The president of Alis, Guido Grimaldi, added that "our country needs an acceleration in the digital transition process of the logistics chain" and that the arrival of the e-CMR in Italy "will represent an important step forward for the competitiveness and efficiency of our transport companies". But the greatest satisfaction was expressed by Confartigianato Trasporti, an associated company of which participated last year in the experimentation promoted by Uniontrasporti involving four companies, mainly based near the border and therefore more affected by the problems of international transport and cabotage. Confartigianato recalled for the occasion that "for years it has been urging the government to ratify the Protocol, also because Italy remained among the last countries to have not yet done so, remaining in a position of competitive disadvantage, both with respect to the issues of red tape and digitization both with respect to the regularity of the market".