liberty是什么意思国内法规,国际标准和技术贸易壁垒【外文翻译】

2020年11月25日发(作者：李诗韵)

外文翻译
原文
Domestic regulation, international standards, and technical barriers to trade
Material Source:Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Queensland,
Australia Author:JAN MCDONALD
2. The TBTA and international standards
2.1 The TBTA’s harmonization objectives
It has long been accepted that domestic policies and laws can nullify or impair
the purported benefits of trade policies, and that the WTO must therefore reach
beyond border measures (Bhagwati, 1996: 23–24). The GATT’s national treatment
and MFN obligations do this to some extent, but the growth in non-tariff barriers to
trade during the 1960s–1970s prompted GATT parties to negotiate the Standards
Code, the predecessor to the TBTA, in the Tokyo Round. The addition of the SPSA
during the Uruguay Round stemmed from the failures of the Standards Code to
curtail the growth in technical regulations in food and agricultural products
(Marceau and Trachtman, 2002: 813–815). The TBTA and its companion on food
and plant safety now add considerably to the disciplines on domestic regulatory
autonomy that are contained in the GATT.
The Preamble to the TBTA sheds light on the Agreement’s underlying
harmonization claims. Its key trade concerns are to promote transparency by
eliminating a country’s ability to choose rules that have greater protective effect and
to facilitate trade expansion with associated economies of scale (TBTA, Preamble;
WTO CTBT, 1995, annex 4, Principle 10). These objectives do not necessarily
require regulatory harmonization in the form of a single international standard or
rule. If the basis of the claim for harmonization is simply to achieve economies of
scale or to address transparency concerns, Cassis de Dijon makes clear that mutual
recognition would be equally appropriate (Leebron, 1996; Bhagwati,1996: 9;
Bhagwati and Srinivasan, 1996: 15). But mutual recognition does not respond to
concerns that the regulatory regime of another country imposes transboundary costs,
hinders the implementation of domestic laws, or is somehow ‘unfair’ (Leebron, 1996:
94). Such concerns frequently underpin domestic regulation in fields of consumer

safety and environmental health.
Accordingly, the TBTA strives for a balance between trade facilitation and
domestic regulatory objectives. Its starting premise is the right of Members to
introduce product requirements that serve a range of legitimate non-trade objectives,
including health, and environmental and consumer protection. In this respect, the
TBTA is consistent with both trade and consumer concerns about harmonization.
The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) ‘Principles for International
Harmonization’, for example, advocate the preservation of cultural preferences in
the field of health and safety, identifying such regulations as inappropriate subjects
of harmonization (TACD, 2000, Principle 1). Unlike the TACD Principles, however,
the TBTA still places strong harmonizing disciplines on the regulatory autonomy of
Members in these policy spheres. These disciplines are considered further below.
2.2 The scope of the TBTA
The TBTA does not attempt to specify the final content of rules or
, it is concerned only with the reduction of difference between
Members(Leebron, 1996: 42). It therefore sets general rules for how Members may
develop product requirements and conformity assessment procedures for testing
compliance with substantive rules. These general rules include a duty to consider
adoption of international standards for products and conformity assessment
procedures; a duty to participate in international standard-setting; criteria with which
standards and conformity must comply when international standards are not used,
such as MFN, national treatment, necessity, and least trade restrictiveness and
mutual recognition.
The significance of the TBTA’s endorsement of international standards and
related disciplines is obviously affected by the Agreement’s reach. The TBTA is
concerned with technical regulations and standards; only measures that fall within
the definition of technical regulation or standard are subject to the TBTA’s
disciplines. If a measure does not fall within either of these definitions, its
WTOconsistency is examined under either the SPSA (if the measure sets food safety,
or plant or animal health requirements) or the GATT (for other restrictions on trade
in goods). One might expect that Members wishing to constrain the use of trade
measures as instruments of non-trade policy, or the abuse of product regulations for
trade protection purposes would advocate broad definitions that lead to broad TBTA
coverage. Broader subject matter coverage would supplement the arguably weaker
GATT disciplines.3 The discussion below suggests, however, that the AB’s current