G/TBT/W/535  
 
6 June 2018 
(18-3475) Page: 1/2 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade  Original: English  
 
 
 TRANSPARENCY: LIST O F MEMBER WEBSITES ON  ADOPTED TECHNICAL RE GULATIONS  
EIGHT H TRIENNIAL REVIEW  
Submission from the United States  
The following submission, dated 6 June  2018, is being circulated at the request of the delegation 
of the United States . 
 
_______________  
 
On the occasion of the Eighth Triennial Review of the operation and implementation of the 
Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade under Article 15.4, the United States presents an 
additional proposal to further transparency for the benefi t of Members and tra ders: the compilation 
of a list of Members ' websites where adopted final technical regulations, as well as applicable 
conformity  assessment procedures , can usually be found.  
 
BACKGROUND  1  
1.1.  Article 2.11 provides that: "Members shall ensure  that all technical regulations that have 
been adopted are published promptly or otherwise made available in such a manner as to enable 
interested parties to become acquainted with them. " Article 5.8 of the Agreement sets forth the 
same commitment with res pect to "all conformity assessment procedures which have been 
adopted. " Article 10 requires Enquiry Points to provide information and relevant documents 
concerning final measures within their respective jurisdictions.  
1.2.  Over the years, the Committee has cal led on Members to improve effective access to final 
measures, beyond their notifications under Article 15.2 --from initially providing information 
concerning their national publications (1995)1, to eventually recommending the notification of  the 
availabilit y of the adopted final text as an addendum to the original notification , and inclusion of 
information on where the final text can be obtained .2 More generally, as early as 2000, the 
Committee agreed to "encourage Members to continue sharing their experienc es on the 
arrangements they had in place to achieve an effective implementation and administration of the 
provisions of the Agreement. "3 
1.3.  Technological progress presents an opportunity to further  enhance access to final technical 
regulations and conformity assessment procedures. For example, in the United States, the Code of 
Federal Regulations, the authoritative compilation of technical regulations issued by federal 
agencies and organized by topic , has been brought on line. "E-CFR" allows for searches by of ficial 
citation or word search.4 Other Members, whether or not they maintain hard -copy compilations, 
are also moving to maintain single portals by which their regulations can be accessed.  
1.4.  Facilitating access to a given Member 's comprehensive website or we bsites of laws and 
regulations that contain the bulk of technical regulations is an important complement to 
notification of individual final measures with appropriate internet links, which has become a 
                                                
1 G/TBT/ 1/Rev. 13, 5.2.1. 
2 G/TBT/19  (14 November 2006 ) para. 68(c)(iii); G/TBT/35 Recommendation of the Committee on 
Coherent Use of Notification Formats, (24 June 2014) ; Reprinted in G/TBT/1/Rev.13, pp. 35 and 57 . 
3 G/TBT/1 /Rev.13 , 5.2.1(c) . 
4  See https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi -bin/text -idx?tpl=%2Findex.tpl .  G/TBT/W/535  
 
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  common practice of the United States and other Members . (The 2014 Recommendation of the 
Committee on Coherent Notification Formats calls on Members to use an addendum to notify 
additional information related to a notification or the text of a notified measure, "including if… the 
notified measure is adopted, p ublished, or enters into force, especially in cases where relevant 
dates have not been provided in the original notification or have been changed. Members are 
encouraged to indicate how the final text of the measure can be obtained, including website 
addre ss…"5). 
1.5.  Compilations of measures, sometimes referred to as "registries," provide a fuller contextual 
understanding of individual measures and include measures that were not necessarily notified to 
the Committee (such as those based on international standar ds.) The World Bank 's project on 
"Regulatory Governance" recently surveyed, as an important indicator of transparency, the extent 
to which countries ' laws and regulations currently in force can be freely and easily accessed in a 
single consolidated and fre quently updated registry, in particular a single website.6  
1.6.  Whether or not a Member maintains a single portal, or multiple ministry websites, however, 
up-to-date information concerning on -line registries or websites where final technical regulations, 
as we ll as applicable conformity assessment procedures, can be freely accessed is helpful to 
traders and Members. The extent to which the Committee identifies such websites and encourages 
their updating also complements the work of Enquiry Points.  
PROPOSAL  2  
2.1.  The United States proposes that Members be encouraged to provide the Secretariat, 
preferably before the March 2019 TBT Committee meeting, with up -to date website information for 
where adopted final texts of technical regulations , as well as applicable conform ity assessment 
procedures, can normally be accessed. In turn, the Committee should request the Secretariat to 
maintain a list of such websites, based on information from Members and within the limits of its 
resources.  This list should be kept up to date an d be made readily available to Members, including, 
for example, in the Committee's Annual Review of the Implementation and Operation of the TBT 
Agreement, as well as to the public.  
 
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5 Recommendation of the Committee on Coherent Use of Notification Formats , G/TBT/35 (24 June 
2014) ; Reprinted in G/TBT/ 1/Rev.13, p.57.  
6 Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance, http://rulemaking.worldbank.org/key -findings . The study 
is expected to be updated in 2018.