KEYWORDS: CMR, Croatian case law, road carrier’s liability

SUMMARY: Dr Adriana Padovan of the Adriatic Institute and Prof Nikoleta Radionov of the Zagreb Law Faculty participate as country correspondents on the international project coordinated by the Dutch Stichting Vervoeradres in cooperation with the Institut du Droit International des Transports – IDIT from Rouen (France). The project gathers correspondents from more than 20 European countries. The final goal is to publish a new edition of the book K. F. Haak, The liability of the carrier under CMR, Haag, Stichting Vervoeradres, 1986.

The publication will be useful for the legal practitioners and academics specialised in transport law and will contain valuable information on the application of the CMR convention and its interpretation in comparative law. In addition, an internet database is being created containing the relevant national legislation, case law and national reports on the interpretation of the CMR convention. Prof Radionov and dr Padovan collected more than 600 decisions of Croatian courts dealing with the application of the CMR convention.

They analysed and systemised the collected case law according to certain important legal issues and they successfully identified: a) the issues that have so far led to ununiformed positions of the Croatian courts and b) issues that have been interpreted in a manner which is not in line with the relevant international practice. They suggested certain solutions for the future development of the domestic case law that should be in line with the prevailing interpretation of the CMR convention in its international application. Based on this analysis, Prof Radionov and dr Padovan prepared a country report which has been published on the IDIT website.

In the second phase of the project Prof Radionov and Dr Padovan are preparing scientific paper in which the results of the scientific research at hand will be published. Furthermore, in October 2021 Prof Radionov, Dr Padovan, Dr Iva Savić and Irena Nišević, LLM have participated in the preparation of project documentation for submitting the COST Action Proposal OC-2021-1-25263 CMR Advisory Council Project. The Proposal was submitted on October 27th 2021 by the Main Proposer, Prof Cécile Legros, University of Rouen Normandy – France.

The results are expected to arrive at May 2022.