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The World Trade Organization was
established in 1995 as the successor to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
founded after World War II. The system of
international trade rules was developed through a
series of trade negotiations, or rounds, held under
GATT. The first rounds dealt mainly with tariff
reductions but later negotiations included other
areas such as anti-dumping and non-tariff measures.
The latest round - the 1986-94 Uruguay Round - led
to the WTO's creation.
Although the Uruguay Round reduced many tariffs,
a number of fishery products, and value-added
products in particular, are still subject to
high tariffs. At the same time, the diminished
overall importance of import duties has led
exporting countries to become more concerned about
other barriers to trade, especially control or
sanitary measures, technical requirements as well
as trade distortion through subsidies and
dumping.
The Uruguay Round introduced a new Dispute
Settlement Mechanism designed to resolve trade
conflicts between countries. It is a large
improvement upon the previous system and shortens
considerably the time necessary to resolve trade
conflicts.
The Uruguay Round Agreements on Non-tariff
Measures apply to all WTO members and have
multilateral status, ensuring global coverage of
the rules. As a result, a WTO member applying
non-tariff measures is required to follow precise
guidelines to make the system transparent and
predictable, as well as to provide a procedural
guarantee for exporters. This applies also to fish
and fishery products.
The major agreements from the Uruguay Round
with relevance for fisheries are:
Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and
Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures
The SPS Measures are among the most relevant for
fish trade as it may prove to be the favourite
means of protectionism for importing countries. The
relevant provisions of the SPS Agreement for trade
in fish and fish products are:
- to use harmonization principles, i. e. to
establish national sanitary and phytosanitary
rules reflecting standards agreed in the
relevant international institutions such as the
Codex Alimentarius;
- when international standards do not exist or
harmonization is not appropriate, to use the
alternative equivalence principle whereby the
importing country accepts that SPS measures in
the exporting country achieve an appropriate
level of health protection, even though they
differ from the measures used in the importing
country;
- to provide either scientific evidence or
appropriate risk assessment if a country intends
not to rely on harmony or equivalence but rather
on its own domestic standards.
The change in import regulations such as the
introduction of HACCP, is probably the most
prominent example of an SPS application.
Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT
Agreement)
Technical regulations and standards applied to
fish products may at times lead to distortions or
obstacles to trade such as labelling disputes or
testing procedures. The TBT sets the rules for how
these should be designed.
Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing
Measures
Although subsidies are widely used in many
sectors of the fishery industry in a number of
countries, they have seldom given rise to
countervailing measures.
Fish and fish products were excluded from the
Uruguay Round's Agreement on Agriculture and the
Agreement on Subsidies would therefore seem to
govern fisheries sector subsidies. The Agreement on
Agriculture contains regulations dealing with
subsidies in the agriculture sector, which are less
stringent or allow more delay in implementation,
than the rules of the Subsidies Agreement.
Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
1994 (Anti-Dumping)
In contrast to the SPS and TBT measures,
anti-dumping measures have not been much applied in
international fish trade. One of the few cases
known was for imports of Norwegian Atlantic salmon
into the USA.
Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures
Import licences and import quotas for fish and
fishery products are still widely used by a
majority of developing countries. Moreover,
important markets such as Japan and the EU use them
for some products.
Agreement on Safeguards
Of the three principal importers, only the EU
uses safeguard measures for its domestic industry
against imports of fishery products. The European
Community Common Market Organisation regulation
provides for two types of safeguard measures: a
safeguard clause and a reference price system.
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)
The TRIPs Agreement relates to intellectual
property rights over plant varieties, animal
breeds, related technologies and germplasm.
Although the TRIPs Agreement so far has had only
limited implications for trade in fishery products,
the importance of TRIPs is expected to increase in
line with the projected growth in aquaculture and
the possible use of biotechnologies.
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