Skip to main content

Vehicle logistics sector must evolve digitally, says ECG

Around 270 delegates at the annual conference of the Association of European Vehicle Logistics (ECG) on 20 and 21 October heard that the industry must embrace the accelerating shift towards digitalised processes and e-commerce in order to meet changing customer expectations and ultimately survive. The vehicle logistics sector must keep pace with the innovative rapid technological development in the wider automotive industry. However, legal uncertainty and a lack of uniform implementation of existing Europea
October 28, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Around 270 delegates at the annual conference of the Association of European Vehicle Logistics (ECG) on 20 and 21 October heard that the industry must embrace the accelerating shift towards digitalised processes and e-commerce in order to meet changing customer expectations and ultimately survive. The vehicle logistics sector must keep pace with the innovative rapid technological development in the wider automotive industry. However, legal uncertainty and a lack of uniform implementation of existing European and International legislation are currently hampering the implementation of innovative processes.

ECG is committed to digitalisation of the supply chain and is working closely on this issue with car manufacturers through its Finished Vehicle Logistics Industry group.  However, a lack of standardisation at European level regarding multimodal transport e-documents is providing an unnecessary barrier to the seamless and flexible transport logistics ECG Members wish to provide.

The legislative framework for digitalising logistics processes in the EU is already in place. The United Nations e-CMR Protocol (2011) provides for the use of electronic consignment notes for international road transport and allows for a more efficient and competitive alternative to the current paper-based practice.

However, only nine EU Member States (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Spain) plus Switzerland have ratified this international treaty to date which hampers significantly the digital evolution of the logistics sector. e-CMR can only eliminate paper processes if all countries which goods pass through adopt it. Most notably, Germany, the EU’s largest vehicle producer and automotive market and a major logistics transit country has not yet ratified the protocol.

ECG welcomes France’s recent adoption of the e-CMR protocol and calls upon the rest of Europe to also do so as quickly as possible. ECG President, Wolfgang Göbel, stated “ECG fully supports e-CMR, which would be a major step in reducing paperwork and costs in vehicle logistics. The industry is ready to go paperless as soon as Europe fully embraces this”.

Related Content

  • October 30, 2015
    Increase in EU alternative fuel vehicle registrations
    Total alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) registrations in the EU in the third quarter of 2015 increased by 13.4 per cent, reaching 127,661 units. Of these, electric vehicle (EV) registrations showed a substantial increase of 62.2 per cent, rising from 17,488 units in the third quarter of 2014 to 28,360 units in the third quarter of 2015.
  • May 18, 2012
    Vulnerable road users face safety problems
    Concern is growing in Europe over the safety standards for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and powered two wheeler riders. A total of 169,000 pedestrians, cyclists and users of powered two-wheeled vehicles (PTW) have been killed on European roads since 2001; 15,300 of them in 2009. The figures have been published in the new Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) report and reveal a decrease in the number of deaths by 34% for pedestrians and cyclists, and just 18% for PTW riders compared to
  • February 11, 2015
    Stakeholders lobby EU for electrification of transportation
    Ahead of its discussion on the European Union’s key priorities for the next decade, seven stakeholder organisations from industry, transport and cities have written to the College of the European Commission regarding the creation of a European Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy. They called on the commissioners to focus on the transport sector, which represents about a third of the EU’s overall energy consumption and is almost exclusively dependent on imported fossil fuels. The let
  • February 10, 2014
    European cooperative logistics solutions project launched
    Ertico, together with 33 partners, has today launched the EU funded Co-Gistics project, a deployment activity that will unite logistics with cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS). This is the first time that a European project has been fully dedicated to deployment of cooperative services applied to logistics. to be piloted in seven of Europe’s leading logistics centres, Arad, Bordeaux, Bilbao, Frankfurt, Thessaloniki, Trieste and Vigo, Co-Gistics will target the needs of the freight indust