The increase in intercontinental trade and the modernization of transport infrastructure has transformed the traditional patterns of carriage of goods globally. The transportation by land precedes and follows the sea carriage. These developments led to the growing use of multimodal transportation, which simplifies the door-to-door delivery of goods by different modes of transport under a single contract. The existing transport conventions deal with one specific mode of transport, such as sea, rail, air and inland waterways, while an international mandatory convention related to multimodal transportation is lacking. The previous attempts to create an international legal instrument to govern this type of carriage have not been successful. In response to that a new transport convention was adopted in 2008, the "United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea" (The Rotterdam Rules). This Convention has introduced the new concept of "maritime plus", and thus will govern the whole of a contract of carriage, which has an international sea leg, including those segments that are to be performed by other transport modes. The controversies surrounding the "maritime plus" regime of the Rotterdam Rules have provided the impetus for the EU to instigate discussions in whether it needs to adopt its own legislation concerning multimodal transport and not just wait for an international solution. The principal purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the "maritime plus" regime under the Rotterdam Rules. The analysis includes a critical review of existing international conventions and their provisions pertaining to multimodal transportation and the "maritime plus" regime of the Rotterdam Rules. A key issue in this thesis is uniformity and harmonization in transport law, complemented by an examination of regional harmonization in the context of EU law-making and jurisprudence in the field of international transport. The author also critically examines how the Rotterdam Rules as a Convention can contribute to universal uniformity on carriage of goods, in light of the carriage being "maritime plus" instead of multimodal, as well as the implications for the European carriage of goods.