French law to recognize electronic shipping documents

France is set to be one of the 1st major economies to adopt electronic trade documents as the government authorized a short but wide-ranging review to examine what regulatory changes are needed.
The finance, justice, and foreign affairs ministries tasked a working group led by Béatrice Collot of La Banque Postale and Philippe Henry, which was formed at the start of the year.
The Paris Europlace working group contains representatives from shipping sector businesses such as CMA CGM, essDocs, Buyco, and officials of lenders such as Crédit Agricole, Natixis, Société Générale, platforms Bolero, Surecomp, and TradeLens.
The working group is already in talks with the justice ministry about how the legal changes will be implemented,
The private sector is now choosing a method where a layer of new legislation enabling the use of digital trade documents replaces previous laws.
Among the G7 countries, so far only the UK introduced the Electronic Trade Documents Bill to the House of Lords in October and the US is also working on changes to its legal framework.

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