Division 2.1 Introduction

Codes and references, as defined in this Part, shall be used in electronic ship reporting for inland navigation. The use of codes and references serves the purpose of unambiguousness: it eliminates the possible misinterpretation and facilitates the translation of messages into other languages.

Therefore the usage of codes and references is mandatory for the data elements indicated in the message implementation manuals. Those codes and references are also available electronically in the European Reference Data Management System (ERDMS) operated by the Commission.

Those codes and references shall be used whenever data is interchanged between various computer applications and between parties using different languages, even beyond the message types in the subject of this Annex.