Notification of draft technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures

Under the TBT Agreement, WTO Members have the obligation to notify, through the WTO Secretariat, draft measures. This obligation covers all measures that may have a significant effect on trade of other Members and are not based on relevant international standards.

Submission of notifications

The TBT Committee has adopted Guidelines for Notification Procedures for Draft Technical Regulations and Conformity Assessment Procedures as well as a recommendation on when to use which notification format. Governments can submit notifications to the WTO Central Registry of Notifications through ePing.

Statement of Implementation

Article 15.2 of the TBT Agreement commits Members to submit a Statement of Implementation on the measures in existence or taken to ensure the implementation and administration of the Agreement, including the provisions on transparency. The TBT Committee adopted guidelines and a corresponding online format for submitting Article 15.2 notifications at its meeting of 13-15 March 2024. These guidelines are contained in G/TBT/55.

Notification of Agreement under Article 10.7

Article 10.7 Members may reach agreement with other countries on issues related to technical regulations, standards or conformity assessment procedures. These can include mutual recognition agreements, equivalence agreements and other types of regulatory co-operation mechanisms. These agreements, if they may have a significant effect on trade, should be notified, through the secretariat, by one of the members party to the agreement, indicating the products to be covered and a brief description of the agreement.

Standardizing bodies: Acceptance of the Code of Good Practice

Standards are addressed by the TBT Agreement in a separate Code of Good Practice for the preparation, adoption and application of standards (Annex 3). Standardizing bodies that have accepted or withdrawn from the Code are required to notify the WTO and the ISO/IEC Information Centre. These notifications are contained in WTO document series “G/TBT/CS/N/#”. The WTO ISO Standards Information Gateway contains information on the Standardizing bodies that have accepted the Code and their work programmes.

Enquiry points

Each member must put in place an Enquiry Point that is able to answer reasonable enquiries from other members, including on any adopted or proposed technical regulations, standards, conformity assessment procedures (Art.10). Enquiry point contact details are in ePing.

Publications

The publication requirements are designed to advertise a member's intent to regulate as well as to provide access to the final texts of regulations. This way, members, and other interested parties can become acquainted with them, have an opportunity to comment and/or adapt to the new requirements. This information can be found in Members statements of implementation.

How to notify

ePing is the most efficient way for Members to submit notifications to the WTO Central Registry of Notifications (CRN).

To access the notification submission services, government officials responsible for the preparation and submission of notifications should register on the ePing SPS&TBT platform and send a message to [email protected] requesting notification admin rights. A notification admin can, in addition to submitting notifications, also grant notification drafting rights and/or submission rights to other domestic users and update Enquiry Point contact details. Users with a WTO account can use these credentials to register on the site and benefit from the single sign-on across WTO websites.

While Members can submit notifications by email to the Central Registry of Notifications (CRN) ([email protected]), there is a significantly longer circulation delay as these have to be processed manually by the WTO Secretariat.