Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
The reform of German transport law
Johannes Trappe *
During recent years, German commercial law has undergone some reforms and, thus, has experienced an important development. First, on 1 July 1998, an Act containing amendments of commercial, business and company law entered into force.
1
Secondly, at the same date a Transport Law Reform Act came into force.
2
In addition, the law on arbitration had just been re-written
—maintaining the old high standard achieved by the draftsmen of the ZPO (in force since 1875) together with later jurisdiction and jurisprudence
—and following closely the pattern of the UNCITRAL Model Law.
3
Among these three new statutes, the second one is the most outstanding as it is of a particular practical importance and has brought about a rather radical change of the law on transport of goods. This Reform Act is the subject of the present paper.
1. Introduction
To explain what the new statute really means necessitates two things: first, to look at the existing legal system; and, secondly, to look at the economic background and impact of this new law.
Regarding the past, it should be mentioned that the new law introduced one identical law for the transport of goods for various means of transport, namely, the inland traffic of all kinds of inland road transport, this law being in most aspects identical with the rules governing international road transport (i.e., the CMR), for inland rail transport, remarkably also for transport on inland waterways and finally for inland air transport. Moreover, the reform produced for the first time written rules for multimodal transport as well as new law on forwarding agents. As to the past, one will remember that there were different rules for inland transportation by road above 75 km. distance counted from the place of the
* Partner, Wessing, law firm Hamburg. This paper was read before members of the Faculty of Law of the University of Stockholm in March 2000.
1. Handelsrechtsreformgesetz of 22.6.1998, BGB1. 1998 I 1471. A very short resumé is given by v. Jeinsen, “Reform of German Commercial Law”, International Business Lawyer,
January 2000, p. 7.
2. Transportrechtsreformgesetz of 25.6.1998, BGB1. 1998 I 1588 (“TRG”). The Court of Appeal Karlsruhe held, in a judgment dated 22.9.1999, published in the monthly periodical Transportrecht
(i.e., transport law, “TranspR”) 1999, p. 310, with regard to the commencement of the applicability of the new law: “Der zeitliche Anwendungsbereich des durch das Gesetz zur Änderung der Haftungsbeschränkung in der Binnenschiffahrt vom 25.8.1998 geänderten BSchG bemisst sich nach den allgemeinen Grundsätzen des intertemporalen Rechts”. As held by Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt a.M., the new law has no retroactive effect: TranspR 2000, p. 120. Cf.
Fremuth, “Das Transportrechtsreformgesetz und sein Übergangsrecht”, TranspR 1999, p. 95.
3. Contained in the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended by BGB1. 1997 I 3224. Regarding the history of the Act and an English translation, cf.
Berger, The New German Arbitration Law
(1998).
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