Rotterdam Rules
The 2008 convention designed to cover door to door carriage around a sea leg, still not in force for want of ratifications.
The Rotterdam Rules were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2008 and opened for signature in Rotterdam on September 23, 2009, with the ambition of replacing Hague-Visby and Hamburg at a stroke. Their distinctive feature is that they are maritime plus: they apply to a door-to-door contract whenever it includes an international sea leg, which settles most of the multimodal problem without claiming to govern purely inland carriage. They abolish nautical fault, lengthen the period of responsibility, raise the limits, admit electronic transport records, extend the time bar to two years and create the volume contract, within which a sophisticated shipper may negotiate derogating terms. That last point earned them the hostility of part of the shipper and cargo underwriting community, which saw in it the door reopened to exemption clauses. The problem they were meant to solve remains open: more than fifteen years after opening for signature, they are not in force.
Opened for signature in Rotterdam in September 2009, the text was signed by twenty-five states, among them the United States, France and the Netherlands, but only five have ratified it so far, where twenty ratifications are required for entry into force. The limits it sets, 875 special drawing rights per package or 3 per kilogram, therefore remain theoretical and the split between three sea carriage regimes goes on.
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