An ICC working party first draft of the electronic supplement to UCP 500 is being sent to ICC national committees and Banking Commission members for comment. Comments have been requested to be sent back to ICC by 12 February 2001.

The official name for the work is presently "UCP Supplement for Electronic Presentation" (or eUCP for short). It will provide a number of definitions to allow current UCP terminology to allow current UCP terminology to accommodate the presentation of the equivalent of paper documents electronically and to provide, where necessary, rules to allow UCP and the eUCP to work together.

The paper has been written to allow for presentation completely electronically or to allow for a mixture of paper and electronic presentation. It has been specifically drafted to be independent of specific technologies and electronic commerce systems.

A tentative timetable for completing work on the eUCP has been devised, which foresees its final approval by the ICC Banking Commission in 2001 and the coming into force of the supplement sometime in 2002. These timetables could be upset, however, depending on the number of comments received and the capacity of the working party and the Banking Commission to deal with them.

Though drafts of ICC documents are only available to ICC national committees and Banking Commission members, the full text of eUCP will be published on DC-PRO Focus as soon as it has been approved. We will also keep readers apprised of any further developments in the meantime.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of ICC or of the other partners in DC-PRO.