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A relatively new frontier for legal and policy analysis, technical barriers to trade (TBT’s) have become more common as traditional border barriers have been reduced. This comprehensive Handbook comprises original essays by eminent trade scholars exploring the implications of the WTO’s TBT Agreement.
The TBT Agreement imposes disciplines on the manner in which WTO member countries adopt and maintain technical measures, recognizing the importance of such measures to advance legitimate domestic policy goals such as health, safety and environmental objectives, but also the potential for technical measures to constitute barriers to trade. The contributors to this volume provide an in-depth examination of the text of the Agreement and how the WTO’s dispute settlement system, the TBT Committee, WTO members, and other international organizations have engaged with and been affected by it.
The book’s 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 law.
Foreword
Michael J. Trebilcock
1. Introduction
Robert Howse
2. The TBT Agreement in Context
Arkady Kudryavtsev
3. Conformity Assessment Procedures
Arthur E. Appleton
4. Transparency Obligations under the TBT Agreement
Dénise Prevost
5. Standard of Review in Dispute in TBT Cases
Michael M. Du
6. Moving Out of the Shadows: Bringing Transparency to Standards and Regulations in the WTO’s TBT Committee
Petros Mavroidis and Erik N. Wijkström
7. International Standards
Markus Wagner
8. Mutual Recognition Agreements and Equivalence Agreements
Helen Churchman
9. The Limits of PTAs: WTO Legal Restrictions on the Use of WTO-Plus Technical Regulations in PTAs
Joel P. Trachtman
10. The TBT Agreement and Developing Countries
Graham Mayeda
11. Contemporay Probems of Climate Change and the TBT Agreement: Moving Beyond Eco-Labelling
Michael Cardwell and Fiona Smith
12. The REACH Regulation and the TBT Agreement: The Role of the TBT Committee in Regulatory Processes
Lukasz Gruszczynski
13. Consumer Information, Consumer Preferences and Product Labels under the TBT Agreement
Tania Voon, Andrew Mitchell and Catherine Gascoigne
14. The TBT Agreement and Private Standards
Alessandra Arcuri
15. Technical Barriers to Trade in Information and Communication Technologies
Branislav Hazucha
16. Conclusion
Tracey Epps
Edited by Tracey Epps, Senior Trade Law Adviser, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Michael J. Trebilcock, Professor of Law and Economics, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Canada
‘Congratulations on an outstanding book on the WTO TBT Agreement! International regulations and standards reflect societies’ fundamental choices. Regulating and monitoring them is complex, and the renowned co-authors of this book have well understood the multi-faceted matters at stake. In this book, world experts have seized a unique opportunity provided by the wealth of recent TBT jurisprudence to analyse the different dimensions of the TBT Agreement, a WTO agreement little discussed up to now. WTO experts as well as anyone interested in the reach of WTO law into the balance between national sovereignty and the need for international co-operation must read this book.’
– Gabrielle Marceau, WTO, Legal Affairs Division, UNIGE and Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland
