United Nations agreement on motor vehicle emissions comes into force

The ‘Agreement on global technical regulations’ will help to uniformly provide greater environmental protection, energy efficiency, vehicle safety and pollution reduction from automobiles for UN nations, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe announced.

The technical regulations will be achieved through harmonisation of existing national and international regulations, one month after the last of eight signatories joined the agreement. The contracting parties are: Russia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, the USA and the European Community. Spain has already decided to sign the agreement, and South Africa has already signed up although still has to ratify it to become a Party. Several other countries have expressed their intention to also become signatories.

Under the agreement participating countries may submit candidate regulations that will be included in a compendium of regulations that other countries can adopt. These countries may also collaborate in the development of new global regulations which they could propose to adopt in their country.

The agreement will be administered by the Economic Commission for Europe body the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations.