[2] In practice, freight forwarders have become important MTOs; they have moved away from their traditional role as agents for the sender, accepting a greater liability as carriers.
Large sea carriers have also evolved into MTOs; they provide customers with so-called door-to-door service.
Multimodal transport research is being conducted across a wide range of government, commercial and academic centers.
[3] The European Commission has invested heavily in multimodal research under the H2020 programme[4] – examples are CORE[5] and SYNCHRO-NET.
According to the network principle, the different conventions coexist unchanged; the carrier's liability is defined according to where the breach of contract has occurred (where the goods have been damaged during transport, for example).