Mr. Johan Renders of EC made a presentation on Safety requirement for EVs in EU. He explained the legal framework of EU type approval for motor vehicles and the current requirements and how the objectives to address safety of Electric Vehicles in this framework have been accommodated.

Answering the question [about] how the future GTR on EVS could/would be introduced into the EU legal framework, he explained that the procedure to be pursued would be to have the GTR provisions included in Regulations annexed to the 1958 Agreement and subsequently to require compliance with these Regulations for the purpose of typeapproval in the EU.

NHTSA asked [about] the legal difference between EU Regulations and EU Directives. The EC provided this information by explaining that Directives provide some flexibility for EU Member States to decide how to apply them nationally, but also entailed administrative burdens as they need to be transposed in the national legislation of each of the 27 EU Member States. This is why the EU legal framework is more and more using EU Regulations, which are directly applicable in the EU Member States, without the need of having them transposed in the national legislation of the Member States,
and which should ensure uniform application of the requirements in the 27 EU Member States.

OICA asked for clarification about the interaction between the General Safety Regulation and the EU Directive for the Type Approval of motor vehicles. EC answered that this is an example of the trend to move from Directives to Regulations, but in this case the provisions of the General Safety Regulation have to be referred to in the EU Directive, which results also in some administrative burden. For the future it is not to be excluded that the Regulation and the Directive will be merged into one legal instrument (most likely a EU Regulation).