EC Regulation on General Safety Updated to Include Compulsory UN ECE Regulations

When EC Regulation No. 661/2009 concerning "type approval requirements for the general safety of motor vehicles, their trailers and systems, components and separate technical units intended therefor" (often referred to as the General Safety Regulation or GSR) was published, one of its stated aims was to "simplify" the type approval legislation. This "legislative simplification" was achieved by repealing 50 of the "separate" EC Directives and replacing them with references to the corresponding Regulations of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN ECE). However, within (EC) No. 661/2009, the Annex specifying the list of UN ECE Regulations which would apply on a compulsory basis (Annex IV) was intentionally left blank so that it could be populated at a later date.

On 28th April 2011, the European Commission published Regulation (EU) No. 407/2011, which amended Annex IV of (EC) No. 661/2009 to introduce a full list of the UN ECE Regulations which apply on a compulsory basis. This new Annex IV not only specifies which UN ECE Regulations are compulsory, but also defines the precise level of each Regulation which must be complied with, in terms of both the series of amendments and supplement level.

Compliance with the UN ECE Regulations specified in Annex IV, apart from the ECE 13 and ECE 13H requirements on the mandatory fitment of electronic stability control systems and ECE 100, becomes mandatory from 1st November 2012 for new types of vehicle, system, component and separate technical unit, and from 1st November 2014 for all new vehicles, systems, components and separate technical units.

The introduction dates for the mandatory fitment of electronic stability control (ESC) systems, in accordance with ECE 13 and ECE 13H, were already specified in (EC) No. 661/2009 and are detailed in Annex V to that Regulation.

With regard to ECE 100, (EU) No. 407/2011 requires compliance with ECE 100.00 from 1st May 2011 for new types of vehicle and from 1st January 2012 for all new vehicles, and requires compliance with ECE 100.01 from 4th December 2012 for all new types of vehicle.