2. The Director of the Transport Division welcomed the participants. She reported on the results of the seventy-fourth session (28 February – 1 March 2012) of the Inland Transport Committee (ITC). She mentioned that the strategic note and the road map on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) were adopted. Speaking about the review of the ECE reform by the ECE Executive Committee (EXCOM) and her expectations to obtain additional resources for the Transport Division, she offered the opportunity to the government representatives of the World Forum to make comments on the documents to be presented at EXCOM. She mentioned that a strategic paper on the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety was adopted by ITC. Finally, she congratulated the representative of Italy for his election into the ITC Bureau.

3. She pointed out the contributions of the UNECE to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and requested the support of WP.29 representatives for establishing a Sustainable Development Goal on Transport. She also informed WP.29 about a round table scheduled for the 19 March 2012, addressing inconsistency issues between the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic and the vehicle regulations adopted in the framework of the 1958 and 1998 Agreements. Finally, she invited interested representatives to attend the meeting of experts, scheduled for the 24 of April 2012, on the development of the UN Development Account (UNDA) project on transport and climate change for future inland transport systems (ForFITS), which addresses CO2 reduction in inland transport.

4. The representative of the United States of America stated that his country values the work of WP.29 and the 1998 Agreement. He expressed his support for the work of the World Forum and emphasized the need for the UNECE Transport Division to allocate sufficient resources to the work of WP.29 during this difficult time of budget evaluations.

To that end, he asked that the documentation being prepared by the secretariat be shared with WP.29 governmental delegates prior to the meeting of the UNECE Executive Committee. The Director of the Transport Division responded positively to the request. The Director of the Automotive Industry Department of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, Mr. A. Rakhmanov, underlined the high importance of WP.29 activities for Russian Federation and Custom Union in general. He expressed concerns regarding the reduction of staff at the WP.29 secretariat.