Under the WTO/TBT agreement, WTO members are required to notify technical regulations to the WTO/TBT Committee through their Notification Points, allowing other WTO members 60- days to submit comments. The public can do this through their respective National Enquiry Points. The public can use the WTO ePing system to subscribe to receive notifications of proposed technical regulations for select products based on the Harmonized System (HS) code of the product.

In this way, the WTO/TBT notification and comment submission process can be considered a global public consolation for draft regulations, and in this regard a GRP, leveraging the largest public possible, the world.

The Coalition Technical Secretariat tracks these notifications but also encourages member associations and companies to use the system as well to assist in developing Coalition consensus positions to be able to submit comments than can be used to improve draft technical regulations that pertain to medical technologies. In addition, as the WTO/TBT agreement requires that national regulations be based on relevant international standards, comments should focus on the draft regulation use of relevant international standards.

ePing (Click here to sign up to receive push notifications from the WTO)
HS and HTS codes for Medical Devices (The MD export codes for use on the ePing site)
WTO/TBT National Enquiry Points
WTO/TBT Enquiry Point Guide

National Level Resources

Some governments also provide national level services to facilitate the tracking of notifications that regulators make to the WTO/TBT committee on draft technical regulations.

Brazil
INMETRO – Alerta Exportador (Click here to sign up to receive push notifications from the WTO via the Brazilian government)
United States
NIST – Standards Coordination Office, USA WTO TBT Enquiry Point
(Click here to sign up to receive push notifications using the WTO’s ePing SPS&TBT Platform)

REGULATORY COALITION PRINCIPAL MEMBERS