Hector Fratty

In the 19 April newsletter we featured a special report on the “Regulatory Revolution”, underway at the UN in Geneva, that presents the lighting community with “the Opportunity of a Lifetime” to remove barriers to innovation. This revolution is underway in the GRE Informal Working Group “SLR” chaired by Michel Loccufier, the GRE Chairman, and with GTB’s Davide Puglisi providing the Secretariat.

At last week’s DVN Tokyo Workshop Ushio Ueno, director of the Japanese government’s Automobile Standards Internationalisation Centre (JASIC) and GTB President Geoff
Draper, jointly introduced the Regulatory Session. Michel Loccufier, the GRE Chairman, had also planned to participate but due to unforeseen commitments it was not possible but he sent his apologies and underlined his expectations for successful delivery of the simplification work.

Draper presented the status of the GRE Informal Group’s activity to simplify the lighting regulations that will be undertaken in two stages, and explained his plan for GTB to immediately start work on stage two and deliver draft proposals for the longer-term objective to produce performance based and technology neutral regulations. It is generally acknowledged in the DVN workshops that GTB is well positioned to use its global structure to develop draft proposals as a contribution to the GRE informal Group. Additionally, and importantly, GTB can offer its proposals to countries, currently outside the UN 1958 agreement, operating their own mandatory standards such as China, USA, etc.