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CATCHING UP MULTIMODAL • THE JOINT MEETING’S AUTUMN 2020 SESSION HAD A LOT TO GET THROUGH. SOME DECISIONS WERE TAKEN BUT SEVERAL PROPOSALS WERE HELD OVER TO MARCH 2021 THE AUTUMN SESSION of the Joint Meeting of the RID Committee of Experts and the Working Party on the Transport of Dangerous Goods of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (WP15) took place between 10 and 18 September 2020, with a longer meeting to take account of the loss of the spring session due to Covid-19 restrictions. The decisions that were due to be made at the spring session and were held over to the autumn meeting were therefore too late for inclusion in the 2021 texts of RID, ADR and ADN, the regulations that govern the transport of dangerous goods by rail, road and inland
The meeting was chaired by Claude Pfauvadel (France) with Silvia Garcia-Wolfrum (Spain) as vice-chair. It was attended by representatives of 25 countries as full members and representatives of the European Commission, EU Agency for Railways (ERA) and 18 non-governmental organisations. The first part of this report on the autumn Joint Meeting (HCB December 2020, page 58) concentrated on the discussions of the Working Group on Tanks and the decisions that it made that were approved in plenary. This second part of the report covers progress made by the Working Group on Standards and a number
waterway, respectively, and will have to wait until 2023.
of papers and proposals on the interpretation of the regulations and for their amendment.
THE JOINT MEETING EXISTS TO ENSURE MODAL HARMONISATION IN EUROPE
HCB MONTHLY | JANUARY 2021
STANDARDS HCB readers may be aware of concerns expressed by the Joint Meeting that lack of funding is threatening the good cooperation
between it and the standards-setting organisations. The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) now proposed to amend the procedure of cooperation, mainly to reflect the replacement of the CEN Consultant with a ‘Standards Adviser’, appointed by the Joint Meeting to provide assessments of draft CEN-CENELEC standards. John Williams has been appointed to act in this role, with funding provided by the European Cylinder Makers Association (ECMA), European Industrial Gases Association (EIGA) and Liquid Gas Europe (LGE), highlighting the importance of referenced standards to the gas cylinder industry. It was stressed that all participants of the Joint Meeting are permitted to participate in the Working Group on Standards, whether or not their country is a member of CEN-CENELEC. CEN provided two papers summarising the recent activities of the Standards Working Group, including decisions reached at a virtual meeting on 2 September. Together with the report of that meeting, provided by the UK, a number of amendments were adopted in plenary. In Note 2 to 6.2.3.5.1, “EN ISO 16148:2016 + A1:2020” replaces “EN ISO 16148:2016”. In 6.2.4.1, under “for closures”, the end date
