Contribution to the Decree implementing the French law on the Electronic Transferable Document (DTE).
The report “Accelerating the Digitization of International Trade Finance Activities” (ADAFCI) submitted on June 29, 2023 to Bruno Le Maire, Éric Dupond-Moretti and Olivier Becht by a mission led by Béatrice Collot, Phillipe Henry and Sarah Teper aims to transcribe into French law the recommendations made by the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR as proposed in 2017 by UNCITRAL: United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) (all links in the article).
The work carried out in the ADAFCI report is considerable, going so far as to propose an ETD (for “Electronic Transferable Document”) law to dematerialize the international trade sector, which is still largely paper-based, mainly due to the impossibility of having electronic negotiable (or transferable) securities and the difficulty players have in committing to dematerialized processes in which they would have only limited confidence, in a context of disharmony between regional regulations.
For electronic documents, the Model Law essentially considers exclusive control as the functional equivalent of possession for tangible documents. ADAFCI recommends incorporating this essential principle and others derived from it into French law.
In this context, KeeeX wanted to contribute to the drafting of the law’s Application Decree, which should soon follow its promulgation.
The “Position Paper” below lists recommendations to the legislator for the formulation of reliability requirements applicable to the implementation of the DTE law. These recommendations benefit from KeeeX‘s long-standing expertise in document traceability and blockchain solutions, which address the key issue of the model law: exclusive control of the document and the possibility of transferring it without dual use, under conditions guaranteeing continuity with existing processes by the possibility of going back to paper or switching to digital.
Our aim is to contribute to a formulation that does not create regulatory obstacles in a context of operational urgency. KeeeX’s website link and contact email, as well a link to previous version (in french) in first comment.
The study includes an appendix of applicable legislation and resources.
