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ON THE WAY MULTIMODAL • A HEFTY AGENDA FOR THE JOINT MEETING’S AUTUMN 2019 SESSION SAW A NUMBER OF IMPORTANT AMENDMENTS AGREED FOR THE 2021 TEXTS OF RID, ADR AND ADN
agreed for the sake of harmonisation with the latest edition of the UN Model Regulations. This second part covers the deliberations of the Standards Working Group as well as a lengthy list of other proposals for amendment.
THE JOINT MEETING of the RID Committee of Experts and the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s (ECE) Working Party on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (WP15) held its autumn 2019 session in Geneva this past 17 to 26 September. During the lengthy session, the Joint Meeting continued with its business of transposing the latest round of regulatory amendments from the UN Model Regulations into the modal regulations that apply across Europe and increasingly (especially for road
harmonisation, insofar as is possible, between the regulations covering the transport of dangerous goods by rail (RID), road (ADR) and inland waterways (ADN). The meeting was chaired as usual by Claude Pfauvadel (France) with Silvia García Wolfrum (Spain) as vice-chair. It was attended by representatives from 22 countries as full members, a representative from DR Congo in a consultative capacity, the European Commission (EC), the EU Agency for Railways
STANDARDS Finland followed up on previous discussions on the updating of referenced standards in two official documents. The first concerned EN ISO/IEC 17025, for which the 2005 edition remains in force until October 2020. Finland’s paper invited the experts to consider whether it is necessary to indicate in RID/ADR/ADN the year of the standards referenced therein; if no year is given then the most current version or versions would be deemed to be valid. The experts declined to pick up on this, preferring merely to replace the reference in 1.8.6.4.1 to the 2005 version with “EN ISO/IEC 17025:2017”. They also felt unable to delete the reference to the 2012 version of EN ISO/
transport) further afield. The Joint Meeting’s aim is to maintain
(ERA), the Organisation for Cooperation between Railways (OSJD) and 20 nongovernmental organisations. The first part of this two-part report on the session in last month’s edition (HCB February 2020, page 50) covered the decisions made by the Working Group on Tanks and changes
IEC 17020, as requested by Finland. References to EN ISO/IEC 17020:2012 throughout RID/ADR/ADN are all appended with “except clause 8.1.3” and Finland’s second paper invited the experts to consider whether this was still needed. Its inclusion goes back to the original adoption of the updated standard in
THE JOINT MEETING NEEDS TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE DEMANDS OF MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT
HCB MONTHLY | MARCH 2020
