Chapter 12. International trade, standards and regulations Learning objective

13. Which specific requirements for a product are regulated by technical 
regulations? 
Technical regulations can cover a wide range of product properties. The basic definition 
of a technical regulation given in the TBT Agreement gives some guidelines for those 
elements that can be used in general as part of the technical regulations. 
 
Product characteristics 
 
Characteristics of the production indicators of safety may include: 

requirements directly on functionality and operational characteristics, ensuring the 
safety of the relevant products; 

implementation requirements. There are many examples of such implementation 
criteria. In the field of vehicle safety usual safety criteria include requirements for the 
brake system, contained for example in the rules of the UN Economic Commission for 
Europe (UNECE) on homologation for road vehicles; 
Homologation - improvement of the object, improving the technical specifications for 
the purpose of conformity with any standards or requirements, obtaining agreement 
from the official organization. 

Requirements on design. Vessels for operation under high pressure are a good example 
of this type of requirements. Almost all technical regulations relating to the high 
pressure vessels, require that these vessels were structurally designed in accordance 
with certain technical conditions similar to those included in the design standards of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) or in the relevant European 
standards (EN) for designing vessels; 

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
requirements for materials are given rarely and only in cases when without it it's 
difficult to define specific criteria. An example of this type of technical terms is using
alloy based brass with a copper content of more than 84% for manufacturing faucets in 
areas requiring dezincification; 

size requirements are often fixed if compatibility is very important to ensure safety. 
Plugs and outlets are a good example.