Informal meetings of the WWH-OCE and WHDC of the UN/ECE/WP29/GRPE were held at JASIC for four days on 8-11 April, 2008. The meetings were attended by about 20 people, consisting of government representatives from the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Korea and the EU, automobile industry representatives from Europe and experts from Japan.

The WWH-OCE informal meeting was held for the first two days. In this meeting, the participants deliberated a gtr draft and almost finalized the draft to be submitted as an informal document to the 56th session of GRPE in June. The meeting, which marked the end of the WWH-OCE gtr preparation work that started in December 2001, produced significant results.

The last two days were spent on the WHDC informal meeting, in which a technical study was conducted as the second step of gtr No.4. According to the current gtr No. 4, several test conditions can be selected as options based on the judgment of the contracting parties to the 1998 Agreement, and discussions have been underway to consolidate these options in the future as the second step of the WHDC. An active discussion was also held in this meeting in Tokyo based on the data submitted by the participants including the Japanese experts.