Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT
For a long time, international trade law's interest in science has been limited to the provisions of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement. However, the role of science in international trade law goes beyond the SPS Agreement. The Australia – Plain Packaging dispute has shown that the assessment of non-SPS provisions can also involve complex scientific questions. Moreover, the discussion should be extended to preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Against this background, this article investigates the nature and potential impact of standards of scientific evidence in PTAs. After the introduction, Section II lays out the methodology of the article. Section III opens with a brief recall of the relevant WTO provisions. Section IV reviews the standards of scientific evidence embedded in the PTAs concluded by the European Union (EU) and by the United States (USA), showing that both trading blocs have started introducing more stringent standards in recent PTAs. Section V describes the trends that emerge from the analysis. Some of these innovations seem to expand the application of the SPS science-based provisions to TBT chapters. Others simply introduce new standards of scientific evidence in WTO-X chapters on regulatory cooperation, environment, and labor. In conclusion, the article argues that we should pay much more attention to the role of standards of scientific evidence in PTAs.

Published in Feb 2019. ; Noting that very few disputes have been adjudicated, many scholars have expressed doubts whether the dispute settlement mechanisms of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) will ever be used. This article argues that looking only at the number of formal disputes (i.e. disputes that lead to the adoption of a decision by third party adjudicators) tells an incomplete story about dispute resolution in PTAs (i.e. resolution of disputed issues). Focusing on the PTAs concluded by the European Union (EU), this article contends that the framework established by the PTAs can have a complementary role to litigation. Like the committees at the World Trade Organization, the committees established by the PTAs can foster dialogue and find technical solutions to disputed issues. By looking at the text of the EU PTAs as well as at available documents on their implementation, this article shows how these committees can tackle disputes.

Questo lavoro si propone di analizzare la recente legislazione anti tabacco adottata dall'Australia, con la quale, inter alia, sono state imposte forti restrizioni riguardo al colore, alla forma e ai loghi dei pacchetti di sigarette. Conseguentemente, diverse controversie sono state proposte a livello nazionale ed internazionale, contestando la legittimità della legge sotto diversi profili giuridici. In particolare, si segnalano i procedimenti pendenti dinanzi all'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio e dinanzi ad un tribunale arbitrale ad hoc per gli investimenti. Il lavoro intende evidenziare i rapporti tra i diversi meccanismi di risoluzione delle controversie.