2. The Chair of WP.29, Mr. A. Erario (Italy) welcomed the delegates to the 189th session of WP.29 and opened the meeting with the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations and of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the 1958 Agreement. He invited the Executive Secretary of UNECE, Ms. Olga Algayerova, the Special Envoy for Road Safety, Mr. Jean Todt, the Director of the Sustainable Transport Division, Mr. Yuwei Li, as well as the participating countries of the first session of WP.29, other delegations, and industry for their remarks (see Annex VI of the session report for more details). He announced that the 25th Anniversary of the 1998 Agreement will be celebrated at the June 2023 session.

3. The recent elected Vice-Chair of WP.29, Mr. Naono (Japan) made the following brief inauguration speech: “At first, I would like to thank all the members for your trust in me and Japan. I am honoured to support Mr. Erario, our chairman from this session. Not necessary to mention, but WP.29 has definitely an important role in future traffic safety, environmental protection and automobile industry. I would like to keep three points in my mind as Vice-Chair. First one is to make WP.29 further world-wide organization. I am the first Vice-Chair from an Asian country. It means WP.29 is becoming a world-wide organization in real meaning. WP.29 can be a more world-wide organization by considering situations in various countries including Asia, Africa, South America and other developing countries. Second one is to achieve our goal of safer traffic and carbon neutrality. Thanks to recent technology, such as autonomous driving technology and batteries, the automobile gets more room for improving to be safer and more eco-friendly. WP.29 can use such technology to achieve our goals together with the automobile industry. Third one is to take care of vulnerable road user. Even now, a lot of vulnerable road users are facing some dangerous situations in daily traffic. Traffic should be equivalent for every road user, such as elderly people and children. I will keep these three points in my mind and am willing to support Mr. Erario and all the stakeholders in WP29.”