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PART II - VISBY RULES 541Article 4 (5) - Limits of liabilityDiplomatic Conference - February 19682:[187]Document No. 1Original: EnglishArticle 2, paragraph 1Amendment submitted by the Government of the United KingdomIt is proposed that the following should be substituted for paragraph 1 of Article“1. In article 4 of the Convention the first sub-paragraph of paragraph 5 shall bedeleted and replaced by the following:“Neither the carrier nor the ship shall in any event be or become liable for any lossor damage to or in connection with goods in an amount exceeding the equivalentofFrcs. 10,000 per package or unit or Frcs. 30 per kilo of gross weight of the goodslost or damaged, whichever is the higherunless the nature and value of such goods have been declared by the shipper beforeshipment and inserted in the bill of lading.A franc means a unit consisting of 65.5 milligrams of gold of millesimal fineness900”.[190]Document No. 2Article 2, paragraph 1Comments by the Government of the Federal Republic of GermanyThe Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, according to the procedureoutlined by the Final Act of the XIIth session of the Diplomatic Conference, submitsthe following comments in respect of article 2 (1) of the draft protocol:The Federal Republic of Germany considers it desirable in principle to assimilatethe rules of the convention governing limitation of the carrier’s liability to correspondingrules in international conventions concerning the law of other means oftransport. Therefore, it supports the proposal of the Delegations of Norway and theUnited States of America, to change over to a system of limitation of carrier’s liabilitybased on the weight of the goods. However, following the lines of the Norwegianamendment CONN 16, the “package or unit” - limitation should be retained as an additionalcriterion in order to avoid disadvantages for cargoes of high value but smallweight.To meet these requirements the Federal Government is in favour of a mixed system,which leaves to the shipper the choice between two different kinds of calculatingthe limit: The lump sum per package or unit on one hand and the kilogram-system onthe other hand.As concerns the new kilogram-system, there are to be made two further remarks:Firstly, it should be fixed an absolute upper limit of liability in order to maintain a reallimitation of carrier’s liability as well as to facilitate insurance calculation; naturally,the amount of that upper limit must be high enough to meet reasonable values ofgreater consignments. Secondly, the calculation of the amount of liability should differfrom the calculation applicable under the other system. Whereas the lump sum perpackage or unit limits the liability, according to the present practice, even in case ofdamage caused only to part of the contents of the package, the liability calculated perkilogram should be limited by the weight of the goods actually damaged that is to say,not necessarily of the [191] whole package. This ruling is to avoid that in case of largepackages, e.g. containers, the often considerable weight of the whole package practi-