To consider and adopt the Convention on Direct International Railway Traffic the I-st session of the International Conference was held in Warsaw (Republic of Poland) in the period from 14 till 18 November 2016.

The session was attended by the delegations from the following 21 OSJD member countries:

Republic of Azerbaijan,

Republic of Belarus,

Republic of Bulgaria,

Hungary,

Socialist Republic of Vietnam,

Georgia,

Islamic Republic of Iran,

Republic of Kazakhstan,

People's Republic of China,

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,

Republic of Latvia,

Republic of Lithuania,

Republic of Moldova,

Mongolia,

Republic of Poland,

Russian Federation,

Slovak Republic,

Republic of Uzbekistan,

Ukraine,

Czech Republic,

Republic of Estonia.

The session was also attended by the representatives of the Federal Republic of Germany, Republic of Korea, European Union (EU), Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF), International Railway Transport Committee (CIT) and the OSJD Committee.

In addition to the organisational issues the session’s agenda included the approval of the Rules of Procedure of the International Conference for the Adoption of the Convention, election of officials of the Conference (Chairman and his deputies), as well as discussion of the main text of the draft Convention.

According to the decision of session XLIV of the OSJD Ministerial Conference, Tadeusz Szozda, OSJD Committee Chairman opened the session of the Conference and presided till the approval of its Rules of Procedure and selection on the basis of them the Chairman of the Conference and his Deputies.

At the beginning of the session a Committee was set up to verify the credentials, which after checking reported about the authorizations available in accordance with Article 7 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties as of 23 May 1969 among 18 delegations of the OSJD member countries.

In this context Tadeusz Szozda, Chairman of the session, stated its validity, which was in accordance with the decision of session XLIV of the OSJD Ministerial Conference stipulating that a session will be considered valid under the condition that there are not less than 16 representatives of OSJD member states present.

Prior to the approval of the Rules of Procedure of the International Conference for the Adoption of the Convention on Direct International Railway Traffic the session took decisions in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 9 of the Vienna Convention, i.e/ two-thirds majority of States present and voting.

In the course of long discussions, resulted multiply in voting, the session considered and adopted the Rules of Procedure of the International Conference on the adoption of the Convention on Direct International Railway Traffic, originally developed in Russian.

On the basis of the approved Rules, the Conference elected as President of the Conference Mr. Sergey Aristov (State Secretary, Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia), and as Deputy Chairmen of the Conference the session elected Mr. Liu Keqiang (Deputy Head of the State Administration for Railways of the People's Republic of China) and Ms. Skszidlo Justyna (Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Construction of the Republic of Poland).

Subsequently, Mr Tadeusz Szozda, OSJD Committee Chairman, functioned as Secretary of the Conference.

Basing on the discussions held, the session unanimously agreed with the proposal of the Conference Chairman to postpone the discussion of the text of the Convention to session II which was decided to be held from 27 till 31 March 2017 in Warsaw (Republic of Poland).