Wto Technical Barriers And Sps Measures

This volume gives a detailed account of the parameters for technical standards and measures seeking to protect health and environment

The bookês comprehensive and accessible approach makes it a first point of reference for all trade law practitioners, policymakers and regulators. For scholars and students, the Handbook will prove essential reading for a deeper understanding of trade

This authoritative volume brings together for the first time the foremost research and commentary on technical barriers to trade. It explores the major theoretical issues associated with analysis of the impact of technical measures on trade in goods and the challenges associated with attempts to quantify impacts on trade flows. Previous empirical analyses of the impact of technical barriers on trade in goods in general are then presented. This is followed by in-depth coverage of the trade effects of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, an area where analysis is particularly challenging. Finally, the volume concludes by exploring institutional efforts to overcome the impact of technical barriers, including harmonization of standards and the role of the WTO. The WTO and Technical Barriers to Trade will be an invaluable source of reference for academics, students and policymakers alike.

This report examines pertinent issues at the interface between domestic policy objectives, technical regulations and agricultural trade. It also discusses approaches to measuring the trade impacts of food safety and other technical measures.

This publication highlights how the WTO’s Agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the work of their related Committees promote opportunities for regulatory cooperation among governments and ease trade frictions. It demonstrates how members’ notification of draft measures, harmonisation of measures with international standards, discussion of specific trade concerns and other practices help to facilitate global trade in goods. The study also makes recommendations on how to benefit further from the transparency and cooperation opportunities provided by the TBT and SPS Agreements.

Standards are a feature of virtually all areas of trade in products and services. Yet, although standards may achieve an efficient economic exchange, they have discriminatory consequences for trading partners when governments formulate or apply them in such a way as to cause obstacles to trade, thus enrolling standards among the increasingly significant 'non-tariff barriers' regulated by the WTO. This unique and original study analyses the functions that standards fulfil in the market, their effect on trade, and the legal regime based on harmonization, equivalence and mutual recognition developed by the WTO to deal with standards. The author investigates the way in which both the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures Agreements regulate these three tools, and discusses key topics including: The definition of the concept 'International Standard' in the TBT Agreement. Guidelines on equivalence issued by organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the World Organization for Animal Health and the International Plant Protection Convention. Parallels between the EC mutual recognition regime and the WTO system. This is the first work on its subject. With its detailed and practical analysis of WTO law on standards, the book is a fundamental reference for practitioners, academics and policy makers in international trade law.