Abstract
The digitalization of transport and logistics activities changes the methods of organizing transportation, documentation, information interaction and state control, without changing the civil-legal nature of the transportation obligation. The relevance of the study is due to the fragmentation of the regulatory regulation of electronic transport documents, the uncertainty of the status of digital participants in the transportation process, as well as the need to ensure the evidentiary value, integrity and accessibility of electronic data. The purpose of the article is to determine the features of the legal regulation of transport and logistics activities in the conditions of digitalization, identify problems of the legal regime of electronic transport documents and substantiate the directions of improving the legislation of Ukraine in this area. It has been established that transport and logistics activities are a complex of civil, economic, transport, information and public-legal relations. National legislation does not contain a universal definition of an electronic transport document, using specific structures for road, rail and multimodal transportation. It is proposed to define it as an electronic document of special functional purpose, which records legally significant circumstances of the occurrence, performance, change or termination of a transport obligation. It is substantiated that e-TTN combines the private law function of confirming transportation with the public law functions of accounting, control and information interaction. Problems of regulatory delimitation of the status of a carrier, forwarder, logistics operator, operator of an electronic document management platform, technical administrator and trust service provider are identified; risks of technical inaccessibility of systems, violation of data integrity and insufficient interoperability with European digital systems are identified. Further development of legal regulation should provide for the unification of the regime of electronic transport documents, regulatory consolidation of their legal force and evidentiary value, special rules of liability for digital document management and backup procedures in case of technical failures. Strengthening cyber protection of transport information and harmonization of national legislation with international and European standards of electronic transport document management are also necessary.
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