GTB, the “ Groupe de Travail Bruxelles 1952”, held their 114 th meeting in Seattle, Washington State, in the Pacific Northwestern United States from 29 October to 2 November.
48 experts participated America, Japan, and Europe. This was the 9th time GTB has met in the USA; the first occasion was in Detroit during April 1955.
As usual, GTB devoted the first half of the week to the Committee of Experts followed by meetings of the Working Groups. The Committee of Experts considered and approved proposals for amendments to the UN Regulations and devoted much time to discussion of topics adopted as work items at the request of GRE.
a) The initiative for a “new approach” to lighting and light-signalling regulations by the EU and Japan at the March 2012 session of the UN WP29
This initiative is the outcome of concerns expressed at WP29 about the constant flow of amendments to the UN regulations by GRE that results in a major workload for the UN and EU secretariat to process them through the UN and EU systems. The resources of the UNECE secretariat in Geneva have been reduced as a result of the global economic downturn and the European Union, having decided to adopt references to the UN Regulations instead of references to its own regulations in its General Safety Regulation—part of the EU Framework Directive—is faced with procedural difficulties to manage the frequent amendments and to translate them into its 23 languages.