试析WTO转基因产品贸易预防原则

转基因技术的兴起及转基因产品贸易的发展使得各国对转基因问题日益关注,预防原则即是欧盟等国对转基因产品贸易准入与规范的重要准则。本文介绍了预防原则的相关概念,各国对其所持态度,WTO 协议中对预防原则的规定和不足,以及新一轮回合谈判中预防原则的探讨及我国的应付。     

基因产品贸易未来的发展趋势——"WTO转基因第一案"述评与展望

随着转基因技术的发展,人类在科技发展史上再次实现了飞跃.转基因技术在给人们带来丰富多样的转基因产品的同时,也给动植物健康和食品卫生带来了新的挑战.在国际贸易领域,不同国家和政府对转基因产品采取了截然不同的态度,一些国家,如美国和其他一些发展中国家在推动转基因技术在其国内广泛运用的同时,倡导转基因产品贸易的自由化;另一些国家,以欧盟及其成员国为代表,则从转基因产品给动植物健康和食品安全造成的潜在威胁出发,主张慎待甚至限制转基因产品的进出口贸易.美国、加拿大和阿根廷三国起诉欧盟对转基因产品的审批体制案,是这两大阵营矛盾斗争白热化的缩影.2006年9月29日,经过长达3年时间的审理,WTO争端解决机构散发了此案的专家组报告.了解此案的有关情况,有助于我们正确认识WTO多边贸易体制如何看待转基因产品的国际贸易问题,也有助于我们洞悉国际转基因产品贸易未来的发展趋势.     

美欧转基因产品之争对农产品国际贸易影响分析

随着转基因技术向农业、食品和医药领域的不断渗透和迅速发展,转基因生物安全管理正成为一种新的技术壁垒在国际农产品贸易中被利用。面对进口转基因食品的大量涌现,如何合理地利用WTO规则,保护我国人民健康,发展我国转基因产业,在国际商贸中争得主动,是摆在我国科技界和政府主管部门面前一项十分重要而又紧迫的任务     

论多边贸易体制下转基因生物产品的贸易问题──《生物安全议定书》与WTO规则之比较

本文介绍了转基因生物（ＧＭＯ）产品贸易问题的产生背景和《生物安全议定书》之达成,通过对分别从环保和贸易角度调整转基因产品贸易问题的《生物安全议定书》和 ＷＴＯ规则进行比较,探讨多边贸易体制下转基因产品贸易的国际法规制,并提出我国可以采取的对策。     

美欧转基因产品贸易争端原因分析及对我国的启示

近年来,现代生物技术突飞猛进,转基因产品层出不穷,然而在转基因产品商业化的进程中,与其相关的国际贸易争端愈演愈烈,已成为国际社会关注的热点问题之一。本文分析了引起美欧转基因产品贸易争端的原因,并在此基础上提出了对我国发展转基因产品贸易的政策建议。     

我国转基因产品国际贸易法律规制探析

我国是贸易大国,在转基因产品技术研究、生产及进出口方面都走在世界前列。因此,研究我国转基因产品国际贸易法律规制对我国转基因产品国际贸易法律规制措施的完善和转基因产品国际贸易的实践具有重要现实意义。     

WTO视角下数字产品贸易合作机制研究——基于数字贸易发展现状及壁垒研究

互联网驱动下的数字化革命正在引起全球经济根本性的变革,这不仅产生了新的交流方式、信息共享方式、商业模式及就业增长新来源,同时也提高了社会各界对有关新的国际贸易规则和问题的关注度。即便目前世界各国强调数字产品贸易对经济增长的重要性,但同时为了保护国内信息和数据流安全等开始设置相关的关税和非关税贸易壁垒。在这种背景下,有些双边和多边贸易组织纷纷提出与数字产品贸易自由化相关的规定和措施。而WTO作为全球性贸易组织将在这方面扮演愈来愈重要的角色。本文在分析世界数字产品贸易现状及主要壁垒的基础上,试图利用WTO及其他国际协议相关的规定初步构建数字产品贸易政策及基本合作机制,并对其可行性进行简要分析。结果表明,以Ti SA诸边协议为主构建初步的合作模式并将其逐步纳入WTO管辖权的可行性最强。     

试论国家专控产品的贸易问题

国家专控产品贸易问题涉及国际贸易的透明度及贸易公正性问题。其有关规则由《关税与贸易总协定》第17条、WTO的《关于解释1994年关税与贸易总协定第17条的谅解》加以确定。规则要求WTO成员进行国家专控产品贸易时,应该体现该类贸易的透明度,并不得实施歧视性做法,有关政府不得对国家专控产品贸易企业的商业行为加以干预。我国政府在加入WTO时已明确对上述规则予以承诺。 "国家专控产品贸易"的有关规则尚待进一步完善。     

浅析国家专控产品贸易法律规则

“国家专控产品贸易”问题涉及国际贸易的透明度及贸易公正性问题。其有关规则由《GATT》第17条、WTO的《关于解释1994年关税与贸易总协定第17条的谅解》加以确定。规则要求WTO的成员进行国家专控产品贸易时,应该体现该类贸易的透明度,并不得实施歧视性做法,有关政府不得对国家专控产品贸易企业的商业行为加以干预。中国政府在加入WTO时已明确对上述规则予以承诺。“国家专控产品贸易”的有关规则尚待进一步完善。     

欧盟转基因产品国际贸易监管及对中国的启示北大核心CSSCI

在全球范围内,转基因产品国际贸易呈迅速增长的态势。欧盟现行转基因立法框架及其对转基因产品国际贸易监管的实践显示,欧盟面临着与转基因产品相关的国际贸易条约和国际环境条约相冲突的问题,实践中可能会引发与美国等主要转基因产品出口国之间的贸易争端。由于我国在转基因法规和制度方面与欧盟有较多相似之处,我国应当借鉴欧盟问题的启示,在发展和完善转基因产品国际贸易监管制度的过程中,努力避免潜在的转基因产品国际贸易争端。     

浅谈TBT与GATT国民待遇原则的选择适用问题

作为WTO协议附件1A的协议,TBT和GATT都规定了成员方的国民待遇义务,两者在适用范围上有一定的交叉,如果申诉方同时提起这两项协议项下有关国民待遇义务的申诉请求,争端解决机构就可能面临累积适用两项规则或者适用其中一项规则的选择。根据广义的冲突定义,这两项规则之间存在潜在的冲突,虽然争端解决机构可以依据司法经济原则避免冲突的产生,但是更好地避免冲突的路径是依据相关的冲突规则选择其中一项规则排除另一项规则的适用。     

TRIPS-plus扩张情势下非违反之诉在TRIPS协议中的适用探析

后TRIPS时代TRIPS-plus强势扩张,其适用的效果加速了高标准知识产权保护规范的全球化,形成了知识产权保护的棘轮效应,又缩减了发展中国家利用TRIPS协议弹性条款的自由选择空间,对发展中国家造成诸多不利影响。非违反之诉如能适用于TRIPS,有助于重申和发扬协议的利益平衡精神,匡正TRIPS-plus条款。发展中国家可以重新考虑TRIPS协议下非违反之诉的适用问题,在规则细化完善的基础上,将其作为一种极好的防御措施来应对不断升温的TRIPS-plus扩张压力,使之成为维护自身合法权益的武器。     

WTO对食品安全问题的规范及对中国的启示

以WTO为代表的国际组织为了实现对食品安全问题的有效规范,先后制定了GATT和《SPS协定》规范该事宜,主要内容是国民待遇原则和国际标准的采纳。相对于GATT而言,《SPS协定》属于特别法,但两协定可能同时适用于同一事项。当前主要的食品安全问题集中于人类健康风险的控制和标签、标准中的质量问题两方面,而中国的食品安全问题主要是食源性疾病。     

International Trade Agreements and International Migration

Despite large potential economic gains, bilateral and multilateral negotiations focusing on liberalisation of migration have not shared the high profile of international trade negotiations and agreements. Migration and trade have been traditionally viewed rather separately and the relevance of the many, and complex, interdependencies has been given remarkably little attention in the literature to date. In this article, we focus on the two‐way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross‐border trade and investment. Liberalisation of international trade in services and in the movement of people potentially offers much greater economic gains than liberalisation of remaining barriers to goods trade. However, progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty. The World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has yielded little real progress so far and negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalising the movement of labour. We discuss a range of specific examples, focusing particularly on the interesting case of New Zealand. We find that trade agreements are increasingly including agreements on migration, though typically favouring temporary migration and involving numerically modest quotas. We conclude that migration regulatory frameworks are likely to be further and more strongly linked to trade and investment agreements in the future, particularly given changing economic and demographic forces. The primary focus of migration policies may nonetheless remain different from that of trade policies. While further migration liberalisation is likely to be through bilateral and regional agreements, it will be important to try to lock in the gains of such agreements, while simultaneously working to consolidating these in a way that will help to facilitate future multilateral agreement.     

转基因食品强制标识制度在世贸组织框架内的法律分析

鉴于转基因食品可能存在不确定的风险,许多国家都要求对转基因食品进行强制标识。由于欧盟自1998年以来暂停批准转基因农产品在欧盟市场的准入申请,2003年5月,美国、加拿大和阿根廷在世贸组织提起针对欧共体的申诉。在该案的审理过程中,欧盟对转基因食品的强制标识制度也成为一个争议的问题,这给中国政府敲响了警钟。在中国,目前有农业部和卫生部的两个相关管理办法。本文根据世贸组织的相关规则,包括《实施卫生与植物卫生措施协定》、《技术性贸易壁垒协定》以及关贸总协定1994第20条,从实体和程序上对我国现行规定的合法性进行了具体分析,并提出了相应建议,以期为政府相关部门的决策提供参考。     

Trade skirmishes safeguards: A theory of the WTO dispute settlement process

I propose a framework within which to interpret and evaluate the major reforms introduced to the GATT system in its transition to the WTO. In particular, I examine the WTO Agreement on Safeguards that has amended the GATT escape clause (Article XIX), and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) that resembles a court of law under the WTO. Using this framework, I interpret the weakening of the reciprocity principle under the Agreement on Safeguards as an attempt to reduce efficiency-reducing trade skirmishes. The DSB is interpreted as an impartial arbitrator that announces its opinion about the state of the world when a dispute arises among member countries. I demonstrate that the reforms in the GATT escape clause should be bundled with the introduction of the DSB, in order to maintain the incentive compatibility of trade agreements. The model implies that trade agreements under the WTO lead to fewer trade skirmishes but this effect does not necessarily result in higher payoffs to the governments. The model also implies that the introduction of the WTO court, which has no enforcement power, can improve the self-enforceability of trade agreements.     

Beyond the WTO? An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade Agreements

It is often alleged that PTAs involving the EC and the US include a significant number of obligations in areas not currently covered by the WTO Agreement, such as investment protection, competition policy, labour standards and environmental protection. The primary purpose of this study is to highlight the extent to which these claims are true. The study divides the contents of all PTAs involving the EC and the US currently notified to the WTO, into 14 ‘WTO+’ and 38 ‘WTO‐X’ areas, where WTO+ provisions come under the current mandate of the WTO, and WTO‐X provisions deal with issues lying outside the current WTO mandate. As a second step, the legal enforceability of each obligation is evaluated, and judged on the extent to which the text specifies clear obligations. Among the findings are: (i) EC agreements contain almost four times as many instances of WTO‐X provisions as do US agreements; (ii) but EC agreements evidence a very significant amount of ‘legal inflation’ (i.e. non‐legally enforceable provisions) in the WTO‐X category, and US agreements actually contain more enforceable WTO‐X provisions than do the EC agreements; (iii) US agreements tend to emphasise regulatory areas more compared to EC agreements.     

SMEs in services trade — A GATS perspective

Unlike traditional (goods-only) trade agreements, the scope of the General Agreement on Trade in Services extends beyond the treatment of products (services) to cover that of suppliers as well. The trade interests of particular groups of suppliers, including SMEs, can thus be addressed directly under the Agreement. This paper provides an overview of potentially relevant policies and policy disciplines. It also seeks to identify the scope for further initiatives, from fostering compliance with existing transparency obligations to advancing the Agreement’s liberalisation and rule-making mandates from an SME perspective.     

Effects of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership on Tunisian FDI Inflows

This article focuses on the effect of regional integration agreements (RIA) on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to developing countries, particularly on the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement signed by the Tunisian government in 1995. The econometric study is based on an extended gravity model treated with the Heckman technique to account for censorship of the explained variable. The main findings are that traditional economic determinants are still the main motivation for foreign investors to invest in Tunisia and that the regional integration process had no effect on this choice.     

The WTO Compatibility of the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and the ACP Countries

The economic partnership agreements (EPAs) to be negotiated between the European Union and six different ACP regions under the Cotonou Agreement are intended to be in conformity with WTO rules, i.e. satisfy GATT Article XXIV and GATS Article V. To what extent is this realistic? What would be the effects on the ACP countries?

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This article summarises the following study: A. Borrmann, H. Gro?mann, and G. Koopmann: The WTO Compatibility of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the ACP States, Study on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Eschborn 2005, http://www.gtz.de/de/dokumente/enwto-epa-acp-2005.pdf.