Book Review

CMR – Übereinkommen über den Beförderungsvertrag im internationalen Strassengüterverkehr (Fourth Edition), Deutscher Fachverlag, Fachmedien Recht und Wirtschaft, 2025

Thume / Hartenstein (Ed.)

This is the fourth edition of “Thume zur CMR” and the first after Karl-Heinz Thume passed away in May 2022. Having assisted the late Dr. Thume as from 2021 with the early preparations of this fourth  edition, Dr. Olaf Hartenstein took the editing for his account and this with the expert support of Dr. Jürgen Temme, Dr. Jens-Berghe Riemer, Prof. Dr. Beate Czerwenka, Anna Falk, Florian Jacobs, Jan-Ole Lorenzen and Dr. Niels Witt as well as the authors of various country reports.

Indeed, the new edition of this well-respected standard work on the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR), is the fruit of the pen of experienced lawyers and professors, each of which are experts in the field of transport law and more specifically the international carriage of goods by road. In addition to the country reports that featured in the previous edition covering case law and literature in Austria, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, the Czech Republic and Scandinavia, the new book now includes country reports from Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Spain, Türkiye and Hungary. The commentary on the Convention takes into account case law and literature from recent years and thus the entire practical development in the area of international carriage of goods by road.

In the three decades since publication of its first edition, “Thume zur CMR” has become one of the most consulted and quoted works on the CMR, not only in Germany and other German-speaking jurisdictions, but also far beyond. After publication of the third edition, more than 10 years ago now, important new developments took place, including the accession to the CMR of Afghanistan, Oman and Pakistan, the accession of another six states to the 1978 Protocol and the Additional Protocol on e-CMR which will become mandatory for all EU countries from 2026.

Covering these new developments, this fourth edition reconfirms and assures the position of “Thume zur CMR” as one of the leading international reference works on CMR for academia and practitioners in the, in the meantime fifty-five, CMR countries and beyond.

Peter Laurijssen FICS

Antwerp