192. The representative of the United States of America informed AC.3 that a status report of the IWG on EVS would be provided at the December 2023 session of GRSP as scheduled and requested an extension of the mandate of the IWG until June 2024 to allow for AC.3 review and next steps.

193. The representative of the European Union opposed the extension and asked not to extend the Phase 2 IWG mandate beyond December 2023. He explained the IWG, further to a series of extensions of the mandate in the past, made recently a significant progress in delivering a robust regulatory proposal addressing the issue of thermal propagation, which was the only main outstanding issue not addressed during Phase 1. Moreover, he explained that since no agreement could be reached with the experts of the United States of America, although a compromise solution was being proposed to take on board the positions of all involved parties, the EU representatives and others agreed to promptly finalize the drafting of the regulatory proposal and transpose it in UN Regulation No. 100 (Electric power trained vehicles) of the 1958 Agreement. He clarified that since this approach was in principle developed under the purview of the 1958 Agreement, no prior authorisation was required to launch the work of this special interest group, which remains completely open to any interested party. He hoped that the regulatory proposal could be used by other Contracting Parties of the 1998 Agreement. He concluded that in line with the applicable provisions of the 1998 Agreement, consensus was needed to extend the mandate of that group. Therefore, the opposition by one party (who is also a sponsor of the UN GTR) to extend the mandate of the IWG was sufficient for not proceeding with the work on Phase 2 of the GTR.

194. The representative of the United States of America argued that the work of the IWG evolved in several years and delays were granted because the IWG did not reach consensus on technical matters. Therefore, a solution that would not be representative of all parties involved should not be acceptable. He finally stated that AC.3 still needed a technical report from GRSP (stemming from its December 2023 session) to take a thorough decision on the way forward and therefore an extension of the mandate was needed to allow the IWG to still work on viable comprehensive solutions.

195. The representative of Canada agreed with the representative of the United States of America to find a solution addressing pervasive issues caused by EVs not only in the moving mode and thus extension of the mandate would be warranted.

196. In response, the representative of the EU clarified that the chosen scenario in the regulatory proposal was in fact the temporary parked mode.

197. The representative of Australia as well as the representative of Japan agreed on the extension of the mandate. This later proposed a three-month extension as a compromise.

198. AC.3 noted that if no consensus solution would be found on the issue of the extension of the mandate most likely the issue would fall under the issue resolution of article 8 of the Agreement. This would imply the procedure of vote according to article 7.2. of Annex B of the Agreement as stipulated in 7.3. The representative of the EU advised to look into other provisions of the agreement that could be more suitable in this context.

199. Finally, AC.3 agreed to convene a special AC.3 session (virtual) during the week 18-22 December 2023. The secretariat was requested to provide information on the arrangement of this special session at the earliest convenience.