More than three decades after the adoption of the 1980 MTO Convention, the world of international trade is not yet able to rely on a proper international liability regime for multimodal carriage. This is notwithstanding considerable investments of time and resources by international and regional organisations, a significant European attempt to create a more or less uniform multimodal liability framework, the development of multimodal provisions in unimodal transport conventions and – lastly – the interesting development of the Rotterdam Rules. International trade law is usually responsive to the needs of its industry and steadily follows technological developments, economic and political change and market practices. At a relatively early stage of the container revolution, standard form contracts and associated trade practices were quickly developed by the industry to try and solve the most common difficulties faced by multimodal transport operators. Unsurprisingly the international regulator also attempted to follow. Equally unsurprisingly, the regulator failed and the issue of multimodal carriage was left to piecemeal provisions in unimodal conventions. The Rotterdam Rules have now made a last attempt with the so-called ‘maritime plus’ approach where unimodal thinking is extended to multimodal transport.
The proliferation of attempted ‘solutions’ to a relatively simple ‘problem’ however, has generated a serious legal difficulty: a number of legally binding regimes at risk of conflicting with each other, making a true multimodal regime hardly possible.
This presentation provides the perfect opportunity to try and understand whether the European ‘region’ can shift this trend and cut the Gordian knot of multimodal carriage. Or whether the relative freedom still enjoyed by MTOs should not be disturbed.
