Geneva
On Friday 19 November 2010, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) acting on behalf of the 68 Contracting Parties to the TIR Convention, and the International Road Transport Union (IRU) signed an agreement which authorizes IRU to print and distribute TIR Carnets and manage the international guarantee system for the years 2011-2013. With the signing of the agreement, the continuation of the TIR system has been secured. TIR stands for Transports Internationaux Routiers (International Road Transports) and it refers to a treaty originally signed in 1949 by a small group of European countries, under the auspices of UNECE. Since then, the TIR system has expanded to also include a number of countries in Central Asia, Northern Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. The current Convention, signed in 1975, has 68 Contracting Parties, including 67 countries and the European Union. The scaling-up of the TIR system can be gauged by the number of TIR operations undertaken each year, which began at little over 7,000 in 1952 to attain over 3,000,000 in 2008. At present, more than 35,000 transport operators are registered with the UNECE International TIR Data Bank (ITDB) and benefit from using the TIR procedure.
TIR is the only global Customs transit system. Its continued success can be explained by the special features which offer transport operators and Customs authorities a simple, flexible, cost-effective and secure Customs transit regime for transport of goods across borders. The TIR regime is based on public-private partnership and is managed by the UNECE in accordance with the required mandates received from the Contracting Parties to the TIR Convention.
UNECE will continue its efforts to ensure that the TIR transit system is in line with the modern requirements of the transport industry and Customs authorities. The main challenges ahead aim at increasing the transparency and accountability of the international guarantee system and at replacing the cumbersome handling of paper TIR Carnets with electronic data processing mechanisms. To respond to the latter challenge, the Contracting Parties to the TIR Convention mandated UNECE to develop the eTIR project, which will further facilitate international trade and transport and help increase security.
For more information, please contact:
Ms. Eva Molnar
Director
UNECE Transport Division
Tel: +41 (0)22 917 2401
Email: [email protected]
Ref: ECE/TRANS/10/P17