E-Cards

A Digital Transport Corridor (DTC) is a set of data-related services across physical cross-country transport corridors for end-to-end information exchange at all stages of transportation – air, road, rail and sea. This includes services and applications for supply chain stakeholders like information submission for authorities, visibility services, marketplace services, booking and ordering services, and chain composition services. 

When logistics businesses move goods and services across borders, they interact with different logistics systems in different Eastern partner countries and the EU. This creates technical barriers hampering the instant exchange of logistics information between countries. In addition, legal frameworks for logistics processes and information systems being developed are not the same in these countries, making logistics processes even longer and more complicated. This translates into higher logistics costs, and delays in the delivery of goods and services. 

The Digital Transport Corridor between the Baltic and the Black Sea should help to organise logistics processes and electronic transport data flow so that information is exchanged instantly between logistics chain participants (traders, freight forwarders, customs, other government agencies and consumers), optimising the flow of goods and services and saving time and money. 

To facilitate and harmonise logistic information exchange, the EU has adopted the Regulation on electronic freight transport information (eFTI) and is developing supporting acts/specifications to be followed by EU Member States, moving towards a decentralised federated network of platforms, enabling public authorities to acknowledge electronic data as legal.

EU4Digital developed preparatory actions by adopting EU developments in the Eastern partner countries to test the technological approach for information exchange, regulatory environment and organisational arrangements within and between Eastern partner countries. In this context, experts designed a three-year programme, and defined preparatory actions to establish a DTC between the Baltic and the Black Seas. The implemented programme aims to establish a seamless end-to-end logistics information exchange across the transport corridor between the Baltic and the Black Seas or other parts of the region.