WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  G/TBT/W/261 
3 March 2006 
 
 (06-0923) 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Original:   English 
  
 
FOURTH TRIENNIAL REVIEW OF THE AGREEMENT ON  
TECHNICAL BARRIERS TO TRADE 
 
 
Communication from the Separate Customs Terr itory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu
  
 
 
 The following communication, dated 1 March 2006, is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegation of the Separate Customs Territo ry of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu . 
 
 
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1. The TBT Committee, at its November 2005 mee ting, identified certain elements to be 
included in the Fourth Triennial Review.  The Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, 
Kinmen and Matsu would hereby like to make further proposals on transparency, conformity assessment procedures and good regulatory practi ces for discussion by Members at the forthcoming 
March 2006 meeting. 
I. CONFORMITY ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES 
2. The discussions at the TBT Committee on conformity assessment procedures have centred 
mainly around two aspects, one being existing pract ices and the other being approaches to facilitate 
acceptance of conformity assessment results.  On the subject of the exchange of existing practices, at the Third Triennial Review, the TBT Committee st ressed again the importance of using relevant 
international standards, guides or recommendations  by Members as a basis for their conformity 
assessment procedures.  As su mmarized in the Secretariat’s Background Note on conformity 
assessment (JOB(05)/261), up to that time, Members’  discussions in this respect seemed to focus on 
general descriptions of the procedures used, and th e use of certain guides or recommendations, mainly 
those concerning requirements for the competence of conformity assessment bodies, such as ISO/IEC 
Guides 25 (now ISO/IEC 17025), 62, 65, 58 and 61 (58 and 61 now combined as ISO/IEC 17011).  It 
has been noticed that guides or recommendations  concerning the requirements for conformity 
assessment procedures, such as ISO/IEC Guides 28, 53 and 67
1 on third-party product certification, 
                                                      
1 These Guides are mainly in the fields of product certification or third-party certification, widely used by 
Members as conformity assessment procedures to demonstrate that a product complies with related technical regulations. 
The titles of the standards or guides mentioned in this paragraph are listed below for Members’ quick reference: 
ISO/IEC 17025:2005 on General requirement s for the competence of testi ng and calibration laboratories. 
ISO/IEC Guide 62:1996 on General requireme nts for bodies operating assessment and certification /r egistration of 
quality systems. 
ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996 on General requirements for bodies operating product certification systems. 
ISO/IEC 17011:2004 on Conformity assessment – General requirements for accreditation bodies accrediting 
conformity assessment bodies. 
ISO/IEC Guide 28:2004 on Conformity assessment – Guidance on a third-party certific ation system for products. 
ISO/IEC Guide 53:2005 on An approach to the utilization of  a supplier’s quality system in third party product 
certification. 
ISO/IEC Guide 67:2004 on Conformity assessmen t – Fundamentals of product certification.  G/TBT/W/261 
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  were developed or revised over the past two years and from our point of view directly affect the 
implementation of relevant provisions  of the TBT Agreement, specifically Article 5.4.  Discussions at 
the TBT Committee on the exchange of Members’ e xperiences concerning their use of these specific 
guides would encourage the use of these guides in Members’ conformity assessment procedures, and 
further enhance cooperation among regulators. 
3. ISO/IEC 17050, which was also revised two year s ago, covering genera l requirements and 
supporting documents for supplier’s declaration of conformity (SDoC), was discussed at the TBT 
Committee mainly as one approach to  facilitate acceptance of conformity assessment results.  It can 
also be considered as a type of conformity assessme nt procedure in itself.  Extensive discussions on 
this issue took place at the Special Meeting of  the TBT Committee Dedicated to Conformity 
Assessment Procedures in June 2004, as well as at  the SDoC Workshop held in March 2005.  To 
follow up on these discussions and the Third Triennial  Review, in which the Committee stressed the 
importance of Members complying with transparency obligations by informing suppliers of the use of 
SDoC as conformity assessment procedures, we would like to propose that such information be 
compiled in a list, updated regularly from notifi cations made by Members under the transparency 
obligation, for the benefit of s uppliers in other Member countries, especially developing and least-
developed countries. 
4. With regard to approaches to facilitate accepta nce of conformity assessment results, we would 
like to suggest that discussions on the acceptance by regulators of results produced by conformity 
assessment bodies participating in  voluntary arrangements be elabor ated further on the basis of 
discussions due to take place at the forthcomin g Workshop on the Different Approaches to 
Conformity Assessment in March 2006, under Session II of the draft programme.  Voluntary 
multilateral recognition arrangement s have undergone some consider able development in recent 
years.  These arrangements include, to name but  a few, those developed by the International 
Accreditation Forum (IAF) in th e accreditation of product certification bodies and management 
systems certification bodies, the International La boratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) in the 
accreditation of laboratories, the Organization for Economic-Cooperation a nd Development (OECD) 
in the assessment of chemicals, a nd by the International Organizati on of Legal Metrology (OIML) in 
the field of legal metrology.  These multilate ral recognition arrangements are operating quite 
successfully nowadays and may have a significant trad e impact on Members that have not yet become 
part of them.  It would be helpful for the Comm ittee to be updated regular ly on the development of 
such multilateral recognition arrangements, especially in terms of how the results produced are used 
or accepted by regulators.  
A. S
UGGESTIONS : 
5. The discussion on conformity assessment procedures involves to a large extent the technical 
infrastructure of a Member, which affects how releva nt provisions of the Agreement are implemented.  
We believe that the Committee’s discussions on th is topic would be most productive if the 
participation of regulators is encouraged.  To ach ieve this, we would like to suggest the following: 
(1) Members be invited to share their experiences of using the ISO/IEC Guides on product 
certification in their conformity assessment procedures;  
(2) Members be encouraged to notify when SDoC is used as a conformity assessment procedure, 
and to request that a list of such notifications be prepared by the Secretariat for the use of 
suppliers; and 
(3) related international organizati ons be invited to brief on the development and operation of 
multilateral recognition arrangements on conform ity assessment and Members be invited to 
share their experiences of using or accepting results produced under such mechanisms. 
  G/TBT/W/261 
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  II. TRANSPARENCY 
A. NOTIFICATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF A WORK PROGRAMME (PARAGRAPH J OF ANNEX 3): 
6. Paragraph J of Annex 3 to the TBT Agreement requires that "At least once every six months, 
the standardizing body shall publish a work pr ogramme containing its name and address, the 
standards it is currently preparing and the standa rds which it has adopted in the preceding period. … 
No later than at the time of publication of its wo rk programme, the standardizing body shall notify the 
existence thereof to the ISO/IEC Information Centre  in Geneva".  This requires that standardizing 
bodies accepting the Code of Good Practice notify, at  least twice a year, the existence of a work 
programme to the ISO/IEC Information Centre.  A decision adopted by the TBT Committee on the 
notification procedure under the Code of Good Prac tice for the Preparation, Adoption and Application 
of Standards (G/TBT/1/Rev.8) allows the communica tion of the work programmes via the Internet as 
another possible way to fulfil paragraph J obligations on transparency.  As a result, in order to fulfil its obligation under paragraph J, a standardizing bo dy may either notify the existence of its work 
programmes direct to the ISO/IEC Information Centre or communicate its work programmes via the Internet.  
7. The ISO/IEC Information Centre publishes year ly the WTO TBT Standards Code Directory, 
which lists all standardizing bodies that had no tified acceptance of the WTO TBT Code of Good 
Practice for the Preparation, Adoption and Applicati on of Standards.  There is a mention in this 
Directory that information related to the availa bility of work programmes of these standardizing 
bodies is also included.  Although a number of standardizing bodies have provided their website 
addresses, unless specified, it is not easy to ascertain wh ether a particular standardizing body fulfils its 
obligations under Paragraph J by making notifications direct to the ISO/IEC Information Centre or by 
communicating their work programmes via the Internet.  
B. S
UGGESTIONS : 
8. With a view to enhancing transparency in te rms of the obligations of standardizing bodies 
under Paragraph J, and in consideration of the usabili ty of the information contained in the Directory, 
we suggest the following: 
(1) Standardizing bodies that communicate thei r work programmes via the Internet be 
encouraged to specify the ex act web pages where the information on work programmes is 
located under the item "Publication" of the form at, so that such information may be accessed 
easily; and 
(2) the ISO/IEC Information Centre be requested to provide to the TBT Committee a summary 
statement on the status of notifications made under Paragraph J when the Directory is 
published. 
 C. N
OTIFICATION OF AGREEMENT (ARTICLE 10.7): 
9. Article 10.7 requires Members to notify agreemen t on issues related to technical regulations, 
standards or conformity assessment procedures.  It is interesting to note that no notifications of such 
agreements have been notified for the year 2005.   Because the negotiation of mutual recognition 
agreements, most often as part of the negotiation of  a free trade agreement, has been and continues to 
be one of the approaches undertaken by Member s to facilitate the acceptance of conformity 
assessment results, one possible interpretation could be  that such agreements do not have a significant 
effect on trade, thus notification to the WTO was considered not to be required.  In order to ensure 
that Members observe the transparency obligation u nder Article 10.7, we would like to suggest that 
the Committee reiterates its importance at the Fourth Triennial Review. G/TBT/W/261 
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  III. GOOD REGULATORY PRACTICE 
10. The experiences shared by Members at the TBT Committee on this topic have proved 
extremely useful.  As good regulatory practice needs to be internalized at the domestic level in order 
to be effective, time is required for it to be incorpor ated in the regulatory stru cture.  We would like to 
suggest that the Committee continues to invite Members to exchange experiences related to the 
implementation of good regulatory practice.  
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