Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: WTO's Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) says that member states have to observe international standards. It is not clear, however, what are "international standards", as governments raise questions in WTO meetings even now. Moreover, "international standards" are not always intergovernmental standards, which are often substantially decided by private companies and/or individual experts, mostly from developed countries. Nevertheless, such standards bind all the member states according to the agreement. Similar structure can be found in WTO's Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement).Historically international standards were much weaker than national standards. The initial motivation leading to TBT Agreement was coordination between national and regional standards and systems of conformity assessment. How did "international standards" come to occupy the central position in the agreement? How could such agreements have been supported by so many governments, in other words, how could they issue cartes blanches to the general category of "international standards" whose contents they cannot always be responsible for?I try to answer these questions by studying the processes of making and approving the agreements, paying enough attention to the existence of non-governmental actors and the package deal formula applied to these agreements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Codex Alimentarius, the world’s most important food standard is administered jointly by FAO and WHO and combines the double mandate of food safety and liberalization of food trade. This paper focuses on trade in GM food and on the Codex’s linkages with the Biosafety Protocol that governs trade in so-called Living Modified Organisms, and with the WTO which establishes the conditions under which a member country is allowed to limit or ban imports. The Codex is the global food trade standard which has been adopted by the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures as the benchmark which determines the level of trade restrictions an importing country may impose on food imports to protect the public health of its citizens without much risk of having these restrictions challenged at the WTO. It is an exceedingly complex and highly procedural organization, a characterization which is to be expected in a set of standards that aim at protecting food safety and at the same time trade interests.