The CMR is an international convention holding provisions of uniform private law that should be interpreted autonomously unless there are external gaps or the CMR provides otherwise.
With this in mind, it has been decided to follow as far as possible, the interpretation rules contained in Articles 31-33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Vienna, 23 May 1969) that are generally recognized as a codification of customary international law with regard to the interpretation of international conventions.

From the practical point of view, the CMR-AC works based on the following four steps: Firstly, the CMR-AC identifies issues that highlight serious differences in the interpretation of the CMR. Secondly, for each selected issue, a working group is constituted with an objective to prepare a draft of the opinion that clarifies the approach to interpretation. The selected issues come under close academic scrutiny involving among the others a thorough study of the comparative material related to the topic and an in-depth debate. Thirdly, the working group presents a draft of the opinion to the CMR-AC for a further debate and analysis of the selected issue. In the last step, the CMR-AC adopts the final opinion and publishes it on this website.