Not necessarily, you need to be very careful of the wording of the original statement. The "...and approved..." bit is the sneaky bit. The BX might well have been type approved before then. What generally happens is that Brussels brings out a new Directive and it will apply to a "type" of vehicle being "type" approved for the first time from date "x". For those already in production, they need to comply from date "y" (which will be later than "x"). And that's before you get all the shenanigans because the manufacturer claims that the car was "manufactured" before some cut-off date or other, but was sat in a field for 6 months before being sold and registered....
In any case, mandatory EC-wide "type" approval was only introduced in 1996, so back then, it could have been approved on a national basis in each country (in which case, the ECE reg and Directies quoted wouldn't necessarily have applied in all EC Member States anyway).
