In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a cascade of border closures in Europe in a matter of days. Combined with customers rushing to supermarkets to stockpile on essential items, this led to shortages of various food and hygiene products.

For many people, this was a new experience. For others, it recalled unpleasant episodes from a not-so-distant past. For most of us, it was the first time we had ever thought about how goods from all around the world arrive on supermarket shelves.

The disruptions in closely interconnected global value chains caused by the pandemic suddenly put logistics in the spotlight. Few people know that two UN transport conventions administered by UNECE are key to keeping goods moving internationally, including right to our supermarket shelves.

You may have seen the blue “TIR” sign on the back of trucks on the road. For the past 70 years, the Customs Convention on the International Transport of Goods under Cover of TIR Carnet – TIR Convention for short – has made trade faster, easier and more secure by allowing trucks to transit through multiple countries without being examined by customs until they reach their country of destination. The TIR system, which brings together 77 countries across five continents, has more than 30,000 authorized operators and is accepted at more than 3,500 customs offices worldwide. It reduces cross-border transport time by up to 80%, and costs by up to 38%. This makes it an especially crucial tool for many landlocked countries, for which high transport costs constitute a real barrier to development.

In addition, the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road – the CMR Convention – applies to every contract for the carriage of goods by road in vehicles between two different countries.

Both Conventions date back to the 1950s and, in recent years, the replacement of paper-based procedures has been discussed with member States and transport operators. In February 2020, just weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, countries adopted the legal framework for the full digitalization of the TIR system.

During the pandemic, border closures significantly disrupted both TIR and CMR procedures and made it clear that digitalization would not only speed up border crossing but would also offer a major advantage in such circumstances by removing the need for physical contact between customs officers and truck drivers.

The entry into force in May 2021 of the legal framework allowing this full digitalization – and creating the so-called eTIR – was thus very timely!

In addition to automating procedures, the eTIR international system, developed and hosted by UNECE, is now being interconnected with the national customs systems of all 77 contracting parties to the TIR Convention. This means that very soon, when a truck starts its journey in China, just seconds after the Chinese customs seal the truck and approve the declaration in the eTIR system, all customs offices in the countries en route and at the final destination will automatically receive the data about the cargo. It will also be possible to include information on the CMR and other data such as the COVID-19 vaccination certificate of drivers.

Various countries, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey and Uzbekistan are already in the process of interconnecting their customs information systems with the eTIR system. On behalf of its 27 member States, the European Union has finalized a proof of concept to interconnect its New Computerized Transit System with the eTIR system.

The benefits of using these tools for trade and transport facilitation will be enormous:

• There will be no need for exchanging papers or for physical contact at borders since all information for each truck will be available online in national customs systems the moment the truck departs from the country of origin.

• Trucks will no longer have to wait at borders, which will further reduce transit times. Various countries are already thinking about the possibly of creating dedicated eTIR/eCMR blue lanes at their borders, to further ease transit.

• Security will also be increased, and risk of fraud reduced, since customs offices will be able to perform multi-factor risk analysis for each cargo well before the truck reaches the border.

In his report on the response to the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, published in March 2020, the Secretary-General stressed: “Innovative tools such as UN eTIR/eCMR systems and other tools that allow the exchange of electronic information without physical contact and facilitate the flow of goods across borders should be used”. We are now very close to this becoming a reality. In the future, there should be no reason to impose the closure of borders for the delivery of goods by truck, in the case of pandemics or other global crises.