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According to the general principle of law debts shall be time bared if the creditor does not demand settlement within a reasonable time. Rules to shorten the limitation periods are implemented in Finnish legislation. The general law on time bar applicable to debts and other obligations are laid down in law 2003/728 Act on Limitations on debts. These general rules are applicable to all sorts of obligations (money, goods, services, damages, indemnities etc.) but do only apply if no special regulations on time bar are stipulated elsewhere in the legislation.

The rules on the time bar of civil actions are laid down in Book III, Title XX of the Belgian Civil Code ("BCC"). Specific time limits applicable to maritime and inland navigation are defined in the Belgian Maritime Law ("BML") incorporated in Book II, Title IX of the Belgian Code of Commerce

Canada is a federal state, in which law-making powers of the central (federal) Parliament and of each of the ten provinces are exclusive and respectively sovereign, and are assigned to one or other of the levels of government essentially according to subject-matter. Most particularly, the power to make laws in relation to "navigation and shipping" is assigned exclusively to the federal Parliament, and scope of this power is interpreted to include matters of contract, tort and agency "integrally connected with maritime matters ... in the modern context of commerce and shipping".

The General Principles of Civil Law of China provides that a general 2-year time bar is applicable for civil claims (Art. 135, The General Principles of Civil Law). The time bar starts counting from the day on which the claimant knows or ought to know that his right is infringed (Art. 137, The General Principles of Civil Law). Under no circumstance should a People's Court support a claim which has exceeded 20 years from the date when the right is infringed.

In Argentina all the matters concerning the navigation and trade by water are governed, mainly, by Argentinian Maritime Law (Nº 20,094). Where an issue it is not expressly contemplated therein - and it cannot be solved by analogy - the general law applies. This context entails some degree of ambiguity which affects, also, some of the time bars.