ICC forms advisory board to accelerate legal reform on digital trade
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has formed an advisory board comprising intergovernmental, policy and industry actors in the global trade and trade finance industry, in order to accelerate progress on legal reform to enable digital trade. The Legal Reform Advisory Board (LRAB) is under the auspices of the ICC’s Digital Standards Initiative (DSI) governance board. Its members so far include the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (Baft), the Commonwealth, International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The board will act on several fronts. One of these will be on maintaining momentum at the G7, following a commitment made in 2021, aimed at adopting electronic transferable records in international trade transactions. The LRAB will focus on scaling this initiative up through the G20. At the regional level, the LRAB will seek to facilitate the alignment of EU laws to the UNCITRAL Model Law on Transferable Electronic Records (MLETR), and seek to promote legal harmonisation in the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The LRAB also intends to work with the World Trade Organization to include a commitment to MLETR alignment in the scope of the agreement being negotiated at WTO’s Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on e-commerce.
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