138. As technical sponsor for this work, the representative of the Russian Federation informed the World Forum about the upcoming activities related to UN GTR No. 16. The sixteenth session of the IWG took place from the 7-9 June 2017 in Moscow, under the chairmanship of the Russian Federation and with participation of experts from the People’s Republic of China, Japan, India and the representatives of the tyre industry. During discussions on the proposed amendments, the tyre industry identified incompatibilities in some cases regarding the UN Regulations and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) of the United States of America. Therefore, measures were agreed on to address these incompatibilities. He explained that during the IWG session, concerning European and American methods for testing tyres at high speed, the representative of ETRTO stated that there is a need to have additional tests along those lines and that about a year will be required to do this. The representative of ETRTO on that occasion also stated that there is at this moment no need to have compatibility between American and European compatibility tests.

139. The representative of the Russian Federation informed the World Forum that during the session the IWG considered the proposal of Peoples Republic of China and suggested that their representative develop specific amendments to the UN GTR, on the basis of Article 4.2 of the 1998 Agreement. The IWG also agreed to the proposal of India for developing amendments to the UN GTR text, however Japan reserved their position and requested to revert to the matter at the next meeting of the working party.

140. As concerning the global markings for tyres, the representative of the Russian Federation stated that a decision was reached to request statistics from the tyre industry on the quantities of tyres that can be qualified as global tyres. He informed the World Forum that the next meeting of the IWG would take place on the 30-31 October 2017, or 2-3 November 2017 in Brussels, Belgium. He added that the results of the group would be presented to GRRF at its eighty-fourth session in September. Given the above, he stated that they would ask for advice on postponing remaining deliverables for a year. Depending on the decisions taken by the GRRF, the Russian Federation, as the technical sponsor for the amendments to the GTR, would develop a corresponding proposal for AC.3 for a decision to be taken at its next meeting in November 2017. The representative of the Russian Federation invited delegates to participate in the upcoming meeting in Brussels and to send experts from countries that apply self-certification procedures, the United States and Canada, to ensure that an agreement on the GTR would be reached and harmonized with the standards applied in those areas.

141. The representative of the Russian Federation concluded his presentation of the work of the IWG with thanking all participants for their work and the tyre industry for their support and active participation in the work on amendments to the UN GTR No. 16.