On behalf of Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, UIC Director general, UIC delegation expressed assurance that the strategic visions of the organisations would be shared and coordinated within the domains of standardisation and certification.

The meeting adopted the following agenda:

• Analysis of the parameters of the subsystem “Telematic applications for passenger service (TAP)”
• Analysis of the parameters of the subsystem “Noise”
• Exchange of practical experience for the purpose of coordinating measures to preserve and improve existing technical and operational compatibility at the CIS-EU border

During the meeting, the participants reviewed the new draft of the document consolidated by ERA “Analysis of the basic parameters for maintaining the technical and operational compatibility of the 1520 mm and 1435 mm gauge rail systems at the [Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – European Union (EU)] border. Subsystem: Telematics Applications for Passenger Service (TAP)" and agreed on a number of additions to the 9th version of the document. The meeting invited Russian experts to provide 1520 TAP technical information and to add it to the analysis of the subsystem.

Experts agreed with ERA’s proposal to extend the scope of the analysis to the list of open points to be closed within the next version of TAP TSI and to include these issues in the new Memorandum of Understanding between ERA and OSJD for a further five-year period.

The meeting decided to address the joint leaflet OSJD O 915 / UIC Code 915 as an input to be analysed during further discussions on the TAP subsystem.

When discussing the topic "Analysis of the parameters of the Noise subsystem”, the meeting agreed on a number of additions to the second version of the document presented by ERA. Experts drew attention to the existing OSJD leaflets linked to the noise parameters:

• P 004 “Recommendations for the assessment of the impact of railway noise on the environment” dated 2001;
• O + Р 652/3 “Recommendations on methods of noise measurement of railway rolling stock” dated 2008;
• O + Р 652/4 “Recommendations on noise exposure limit for railway rolling stock” dated 2013

During the discussion, Russian experts provided the link http://nd.gostinfo.ru as the main source regarding the status of 1520 standardisation documents to be available for public access.

Technical Regulation & Standardisation

In accordance with the meeting agenda, experts exchanged on practical experience with a view to coordination measures aimed to preserve and improve existing technical and operational compatibility at the CIS-EU border.
Mr Vytautas Kinderis, UIC Coordinator for Standardisation and East-West Relations, presented the UIC IRS concept and invited the meeting’s participants to the discussion on "Implementation of 1520 standards into the tools of international certification”.

The ERA representative informed the meeting about the agreement between leaderships of the European Commission and the UIC which led to the decision of the UIC General Assembly on 6 July 2016 to henceforth use the term “International Railway Solutions” instead of “International Railway Standards” ("International Railway Standardised Technical Solutions"). According to the ERA representative, the EU legislation does not consider UIC, at this stage, as the recognised standardisation body in spite of generally accepted principles for international and regional standardisation activities to be followed: coherence, transparency, openness, consensus, voluntary application, independence from special interests, efficiency.

Mr Kinderis confirmed that the term is applied within EU territory. To avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding, the term “International Railway Solutions” is interpreted in Russian as “International Railway Standardised Technical Solutions”, because the English word “solution” means “decision” in Russian.

The topic of “Culture of railway safety” was introduced by the ERA representative as an entirely new approach to be developed in the years to come.