国内监管，国际标准和技术性贸易壁垒外文翻译.docVIP

外文翻译 原文 Domestic regulation, international standards, and technical barriers to trade Material Source： World Trade Review Author：Jan McDonald There is growing concern over the use of domestic product regulations as technical barriers to trade on the one hand, and the WTO’s incursion into domestic regulatory autonomy on the other. The TBTA seeks to balance competing interest – acknowledging but disciplining Members’ regulatory control over traded goods. The effectiveness of these disciplines is limited by the exclusion of many modern domestic regulations from the scope of the TBTA; the surest way to prevent abuse of process-based product specifications is to subject them to the TBTA’s disciplines. The WTO dispute settlement tribunals have affirmed the importance of the use or adoption of international standards. While Members are still entitled to introduce their own measures in some circumstances, the emphasis on international standards raises the status of standard-setting bodies. Despite their important new role, the composition, accountability, and decision-making procedures have so far escaped the kind of civil society scrutiny to which WTO deliberations are now subject. To achieve the TBTA’s harmonization objectives, the development, and use of international standards and their legal recognition within the WTO regime should be revised to safeguard legitimate non-trade regulatory 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 te