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WP15 gets to work on next ADR
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
ADR • WP15 HAS BEGUN THE WORK OF PREPARING THE 2025 TEXT OF ADR. IT IS CLEAR THAT AT LEAST SOME AMENDMENTS WILL BE NEEDED TO REFLECT THE UN’S SUSTAINABILITY AGENDA
THE UN ECONOMIC Commission for Europe’s (ECE) Working Party on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (WP15) held its 112th session from 8 to 11 November 2022, once again in hybrid format with some delegates participating online. The meeting was chaired by Ariane Roumier (France) with Alfonso Simoni (Italy) as vice-chair; it was attended by representatives from 26 contracting parties, as well as from Australia, Jordan and Nigeria, the latter as a full member. Also represented were the EU, the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) and seven non-governmental organisations.
The Working Party welcomed the accession of Uganda to the ADR Agreement, which brought the number of contracting parties to 54. The Working Party invited the participation of all contracting parties, all those countries looking to accede to ADR and countries applying or intending to apply the provisions in the annexes to ADR in their national regulations. It also reminded that those countries that have not yet deposited the necessary legal instruments for the 1993 Protocol to enter into force to take the necessary measures.
As the 2023 text of ADR had been finalised at WP15’s previous meeting (HCB July-August 2022, page 52) and the UN Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and GHS was not to adopt the final amendments that will appear in the 23rd revised edition of the UN Model Regulations until December, the November session of WP15 was concerned mainly with ratifying those amendments already agreed by the Joint Meeting at its autumn session in September (HCB December 2022, page 38). Indeed, the session was faced with only five working documents as it began its preparation of the text of ADR that will enter into force in 2025.
JOINT MEETING OUTPUT The first item to consider was an informal document provided by the secretariat, summarising the decisions made at the Joint Meeting. To recap, these are: • Renumbering of the paragraphs in 1.8.3.2 and the insertion of ‘consignment,’ before ‘carriage,’ twice, to include consignors in the exemption provided to other players in the transport chain from the need to appoint a dangerous goods safety adviser under certain circumstances • Deletion of the last sentence of the fifth paragraph of special provision 376 and the addition of a new special provision 377 concerning the transport of damaged or defective lithium cells and batteries and their assignment to transport category 0, which in the Dangerous Goods List is assigned to UN Nos 3090, 3091, 3480 and 3481 • Permission to maintain the tank record in electronic form, via a new Note to 4.3.2.1.7 • Various updates and additions to the lists of standards in Chapters 6.2 and 6.8. With regard to the last point, the square
brackets inserted around EN 13799:2022 in the table in 6.8.2.6.1 were removed, as this standard has now been published.
VEHICLES The secretariat had spotted that, when WP15 adopted amendments to allow the use of battery electric vehicles as AT vehicles, the references to ISO standards in 9.2.2.2.2 were not complete; specifically, two of the three standards noted did not include the publication year. Its paper proposed replacing the version in the 2023 text of ADR with “ISO 19642-8:2019, ISO 19642-9:2019 or ISO 19642-10:2019”, which was agreed. This will appear in the 2025 text of ADR, rather than as a correction to the 2023 text.
The inclusion of these provisions for battery electric vehicles arrived late in the day as WP15 faced pressure to start providing the regulatory environment to allow the energy transition to play a role in the transport of dangerous goods. That process is continuing through an informal working group on electrified vehicles, which had met several times online since the previous WP15 session in May 2022. That group has identified that the existing UN Regulations on vehicle design and construction, No 100 on battery electric vehicles and No 134 on hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, are insufficiently detailed to cover all the minimum safety requirements for trucks used to carry dangerous goods. It also felt that it would be inappropriate to include the detailed requirements within ADR and that the UN Regulations should be amended. Consideration was given to including generic descriptions in ADR, though this may be too ambiguous.
The Working Party endorsed the approach suggested and encouraged the informal working group to continue its work. It also noted that the World Forum for the Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations (WP29) was looking into developing regulations for the use of highly automated and autonomous vehicles by 2025 and felt it may also have to take this into account for ADR in the future. The Working Party also noted that the EU will require new vehicles to be equipped with electronic stability control and thought it might be interesting to introduce similar requirements into ADR so that the obligation can be extended to all ADR contracting parties.
Meanwhile, the Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA) had submitted a proposal to WP29’s Working Party on General Safety Provisions (GRSG) to align Regulation Who do you contact for the latest DG compliant labels?
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No 105 with the 2023 edition of ADR. GRSG agreed to the proposal, which will now be presented to the March 2023 session of WP29 for adoption.
At its 110th session, WP15 had adopted guidelines for the determination of the first date of registration of road vehicles (or date of entry into service if registration is not mandatory) for the carriage of dangerous goods in accordance with the requirements of Chapter 9.2. These guidelines have now been published on the ECE website, with a correction to the English text, which originally missed the “not” before “mandatory”.
PROPOSALS FOR AMENDMENT Turkey felt there was an issue with the tunnel codes for a certain group of dangerous goods, namely those that are only transported in packages, cannot be transported in Limited Quantities and are assigned to transport category 4. These currently have a tunnel code “E”, which Turkey felt was in conflict with the other provisions and should instead be “(-)”.
The proposal did not receive support, with the Working Party confirming that the tunnel restriction code “E” for the entries listed is justified on the basis of the hazards
associated with the tunnel transport of those goods outside of the exemption regime under 1.1.3.6. It did allow, though, that the wording of 1.9.5.3.6 and 8.6.3.3 might benefit from some clarification. Poland arrived with a solution to a problem raised by Austria at the last meeting, which was that it had come across certificates of approval that did not meet the strict model Free DG Label ID poster with every order used in ADR as they contained additional security features. At the time, Poland mentioned that, as the certificates are official documents, national law requires the use of such security features and other contracting parties felt that there was no reason why they should not be used. Poland offered a modification to 9.1.3.3 which, after some changes suggested by the Netherlands, was adopted by the Working Group. As a result, the following text is added at the end of the first paragraph of 9.1.3.3:
It may include additional security features such as a hologram, UV printing, guilloche patterns or barcode. Tel: +44 (0)870 850 50 51
Contracting Parties that have introduced Email: sales@labeline.com additional security features in the certificate of approval shall provide the UNECE secretariat www.labeline.com with an example of the national model for any 2023 IATA DGR
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certificate intended for issue in accordance with this section. Contracting Parties shall also provide explanatory notes to enable the verification of conformity of certificates against the examples provided. The secretariat shall make this information available on its website.
The secretariat offered some consequential amendments following the adoption in the 2023 text of ADR of new provisions for tanks with shells manufactured of fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP) material. Those new provisions, taken from the UN Model Regulations, have been introduced in Chapter 6.9 and apply to portable tanks. ADR already had provisions in 6.9, which have been transferred to a new Chapter 6.13, whose scope is limited to tank vehicles and demountable tanks and does not cover tank containers and tank swap bodies. The secretariat noted that this meant the title of Chapter 4.4 should be amended, as it refers to Chapter 6.13 and thus no longer applies to tank containers and tank swap bodies. It also queried whether the provisions of Chapter 4.4 remain applicable to FRP tank containers that will continue to be used in accordance with the transitional measure in 1.6.4.59.
The first point was easy to address, and the title of Chapter 4.4 will be changed to: “USE OF FIBRE-REINFORCED PLASTICS (FRP) FIXED TANKS (TANK-VEHICLES) AND DEMOUNTABLE TANKS”.
The Working Party confirmed that the transitional measure remains applicable and, following input from Poland, amended the wording of 1.6.4.59 to read:
Fibre-reinforced plastics tank-containers constructed before 1 July 2033 in accordance with the requirements of Chapter 6.9 in force up to 31 December 2022, may still be used, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 4.4 in force up to 31 December 2022.
In addition, the explanatory note for column (10) of Table A in Chapter 3.2 is re-worded, with “For fibre-reinforced plastic portable tanks” replaced by “For portable tanks with shells made of FRP materials”.
INTERPRETATION OF ADR The secretariat brought to the Working Party’s attention the conclusion of the Explosives Working Group (EWG) that had met during the 60th session of the UN Sub-committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods in June/July 2022 and was due to result in a proposal for the 61st session to amend the definition of ‘pyrotechnic substances’ to clarify that they are explosive substances. In light of this, the Working Party confirmed that quantities of pyrotechnic substances will need to be taken into account in the calculation of the net mass of explosive substance in 7.5.5.2 as well in relation to 1.1.3.6 and tunnel restrictions. That interpretation will be worked up and published on the dedicated page of the UN ECE website.
The secretariat also referred to the autumn 2022 session of the Joint Meeting, which discussed the provisions relating to overpacks in deliveries direct to consumers. This prompted the question as to whether two- and three-wheeled vehicles fall under the scope of ADR, since some delivery companies have been taking to using such vehicles, particularly in urban operations. The issue is particularly pressing since, once the Protocol of 1993 comes into effect, Article 1(a) of the ADR Agreement will be revised to specify that the term “vehicle” applies to motor vehicles with at least four wheels.
The Working Party agreed on the need for discussion but also felt that regard would have to be given to other regulatory and legislative texts, such as the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1968, and that it would be premature to present the issue to the Joint Meeting. It asked the secretariat to prepare an official document for the next session and, before then, to consult with the UN’s office of legal affairs.
OTHER BUSINESS A round table discussion on the circular economy from the perspective of multimodal transport of dangerous goods was held during the Working Party’s session, in response to a request from the Inland Transport Committee (ITC) for an annual report from its subsidiary bodies (including WP15) on their work related to the circular economy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The UN ECE Sustainable Transportation Division reminded delegates that the UN Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) had
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also recently revised the terms of reference for ITC, with a view to encouraging nonmember countries of ECE to participate in its work.
Participants in the round table session recognised that the work of UN bodies on the transport of dangerous goods was already having an impact, direct or indirect, on the development of the circular economy and the SDGs and that it was now important to better identify the links between those areas. The Working Party decided to dedicate a new agenda item to the SDGs and the circular economy to allow for regular follow-up. It also invited delegations, when submitting proposals, to note in the justification part any interlinkage there might be with those topics.
The EuroMed Transport Support Project (TSP) gave a progress report on its work on ADR issues, which is promoting the alignment of national legislation with ADR in some countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Since 2012, much has been done to raise awareness but there is a lot of work still to do – and EU funding for the project
runs out in 2023, though there may be a further phase. Following discussions at previous sessions of WP15 that identified the need to translate ADR into Arabic in order to promote its Free DG Label ID poster with every order adoption in the region, EuroMed TSP had taken on the work and it was anticipated that an Arabic language version of ADR 2023 would be available before the end of November 2022 (though it was not available on the UN website by that point). To ensure that this work will be of continued use, a means needs to be found to allow the translation of amendments every two years; the secretariat was invited to consult the relevant services to identify a sustainable solution. The secretariat also reminded delegations that, if they so wished, they could provide a link to their national translation of ADR so that it could be posted on the ECE website.
Tel: +44 (0)870 850 50 51 The 113th session of WP15 is provisionally Tel: +44 (0)870 850 50 51
Email: sales@labeline.com scheduled to take place in Geneva from 15 to Email: sales@labeline.com www.labeline.com 19 May 2023; Ariane Roumier and Alfonso www.labeline.com Simoni have been re-elected to act as chair and vice-chair, respectively, for 2023.
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