国内法规，国际标准和技术贸易壁垒外文翻译.docVIP

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