33. Having pointing out that the European Union (EU) refers to UN Regulations in its legislation, the expert from EC informed GRE about three concerns that EC and some EU member States have with regard to the GRE scope of activities:

a) A large number of GRE-related UN Regulations (forty-one) and their constant updating are a serious burden for the efficient management of the system, both for the United Nations and EU. Consequently, around one third of all documents under the WP.29 umbrella are from GRE. A lot of resources are required for their official translation into various languages, and there is a considerable backlog in this area. Thus, according to the expert from EC, the incurred costs should be minimized by simplifying and streamlining the documentation originating from GRE;

b) Some UN Regulations prepared and/or amended by GRE in the past were rather descriptive and not enough performance based. According to the expert from EC, descriptive provisions could, in some cases, distort the market competition and impede new technologies and innovations;

c) Too prescriptive and descriptive approach could make UN Regulations less attractive to countries outside the ECE region. According to the expert from EC, probably for this reason two years ago Japan had not adhered to UN Regulation No. 128. Moreover, the United States of America, who has only one regulation related to lighting and light signalling, would oppose developing multitude UN GTRs in this area, given the present number of UN Regulations on this subject. As an alternative example, he mentioned the area of fuel efficiency and emissions where there were fewer documents, that were not too prescriptive, and where the Asian countries supported a new UN GTR which had recently been adopted.

34. The expert from EC was also confident that GRE had all the necessary competencies to address these concerns and urged GRE to do so without delay.

35. The expert from GTB contributed to the discussion by presenting GRE-71-17 and GRE-71-24 containing some ideas on simplification of lighting and light-signalling UN Regulations. According to him, these UN Regulations are at present a mix of regulatory (legal) and technical aspects which should be separated in the future. A solution could be found in creating a three-level documentation structure, as proposed in GRE-71-24, where provisions common for different UN Regulations would be put in a single document similar to Consolidated Resolution R.E.3.

36. GRE took note of the outcome of the first session of the Special Interest Group (SIG) which had taken place in Brussels on 12 February 2014 and had been attended by 20 experts (GRE-71-16). In particular, SIG was of the view that priority should be given to reducing the administrative burden presented by the numerous collective amendments. To achieve this, SIG proposed to reactivate the GRE Horizontal Reference Document (HRD) Informal Group and to update its Terms of Reference (ToR).

37. On behalf of SIG, the expert from EC presented draft ToR of a new informal working group (IWG) (GRE-71-22) and stated that EC would be prepared to act as Co-Chair of IWG. Regarding the position of Chair, he suggested that an EU member State or another Contracting Party assume this role. Before IWG becomes operational, SIG would continue its activities. In this respect, the expert from EC informed GRE that the second meeting of SIG would take place in Brussels during the week 9-13 June 2014.

38. GRE had a first exchange of views on the proposed ToR with a particular focus on paras. 2, 3 and 4 of GRE-71-22.

39. GRE addressed the issue of the legal implications of placing the common requirements into a horizontal reference document, such as R.E.3 managed by WP.29. The expert from EC and the secretariat pointed out that, if needed, they would seek legal advice from, respectively, EU and United Nations legal services. The secretariat informed GRE that R.E.3 had proved to be very instrumental for all UN Regulations, in particular, with regard to common definitions. In this context, the secretariat also drew the attention of GRE to the work undertaken by the secretariat to harmonize the definitions in lighting and light-signalling UN Regulations (GRE-71-23). GRE requested the SIG to consider this document and consolidate harmonized definitions into the horizontal document.

40. The Chair invited experts to consider the underlying issues, in particular the draft ToR of IWG in GRE-71-22 to be discussed at the next SIG session, and to report back to GRE at its next session. He also suggested that the newly proposed IWG take into due consideration ECE/TRANS/WP.29/GRE/2008/32, GRE-59-01, GRE 63-27, GRE-66-13 and GRE-66-14.