RID Committee of Experts

Legal basis

The RID Committee of Experts is one of the organs of COTIF (see Article 13 § 1 d) of COTIF 1999). All Member States are entitled to send representatives to the meetings of the RID Committee of Experts, which as a rule are held once a year.

There is a quorum in the RID Committee of Experts only if one third of the Member States are represented there (see Article 18 § 2 of COTIF 1999).

The RID Committee of Experts takes decisions on proposals to amend the Regulations concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail (RID) (see Article 33 § 5 of COTIF 1999).

With the agreement of a majority of the Member States, the Secretariat of OTIF may invite non-Member States and international organisations and associations having competence in transport matters to attend meetings (see Article 16 § 5 of COTIF 1999).

The working languages are English, French and German.

Working method

In order to ensure the easy multimodal transport of dangerous goods, the structure and contents of the various mode-specific provisions are now for the most part aligned with the UN Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (UN Model Regulations). At present, these UN Model Regulations are revised every two years. The result of this is that the mode-specific regulations are also revised in the same cycle.

Before the amendments from the UN Model Regulations are dealt with in the RID Committee of Experts, they are first examined by the RID/ADR/ADN Joint Meeting, which is organized twice a year by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and OTIF. This Joint Meeting has to ensure that the dangerous goods provisions for European land transport (ADR – European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road, ADN – European Agreement concerning the Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Inland Waterways) are harmonized as much as possible in order to facilitate multimodal transport. The restructured editions of RID and ADR, first published on 1 July 2001, have reduced the differences to a minimum.

In addition to the amendments arising from the UN Model Regulations, the RID/ADR/ADN Joint Meeting also considers proposals that are only of significance for European land transport (e.g. provisions for RID/ADR tanks).

The RID Committee of Experts adopts the decisions of the RID/ADR/ADN Joint Meeting. It also takes decisions on amendments affecting rail transport only (e.g. requirements for rail vehicles used for the carriage of dangerous goods).