Revised mandate (with changes marked up) as approved by the GRB at its January 2014 session for the informal working group established to finalize revisions to UN Regulation No. 51 and UN Regulation No. 59 with a view towards their alignment with the latest European Union decision concerning noise emissions from vehicles having at least four wheels.
6. The Chair of GRB proposed to transform the expert group on UN Regulation No. 51 into an informal working group (IWG) by preparing and adopting its Terms of Reference (ToR) which should focus on harmonizing the current proposal of 03 series of amendments to UN Regulation No. 51 with the provisions of the proposal of the Parliament and the Council of EU1, as well as including additional aspects concerning the Chinese and Japanese markets. To this end, a working document would be drafted by the IWG for consideration by GRB at its sixtieth session. The IWG should also address additional amendments by preparing an informal document for consideration by GRB at its sixtieth or sixty-first sessions. The experts from France, Germany, Netherlands and EC supported this initiative. It was suggested that ToR should also cover UN Regulation No. 59 (Replacement silencing systems). The experts from France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, EC, CLEPA, ETRTO and OICA announced their intention to participate to the work of the IWG. Finally, based on a draft prepared by the Expert Group, GRB adopted the ToR (GRB-59-10-Rev.1), of the IWG on UN Regulation No. 51 and UN Regulation No. 59, as reproduced in Annex II to this report, subject to WP.29 consent.
1The “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the sound level of motor vehicles” (2011/0409 (COD)) and related documents are available on the EC Enterprise web site: Reference documents – Legislative proposals: Sound level of motor vehicles. However, the last revision of this document was still in process as of this GRB session and not yet available to the public.
13. GRB noted that this agenda item was de facto covered in the framework of the discussion under agenda item 3(a). Thus, GRB agreed that, for its next session, agenda items 3(a) and 3 (b) should be combined and mention as references only GRB-59-04-Rev.1 and GRB-59-10-Rev.1. Finally, GRB agreed to remove ECE/TRANS/WP.29/GRB/2012/7, GRB-58-08, GRB-58-09, GRB-58-10, GRB-58-14 and GRB-58-17-Rev.1 from the agenda of the next session.