The WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (the TBT Agreement) obliges governments to use international standards as a basis for regulation yet leaves a degree of flexibility with respect to the choice of standard and the manner of its use. This interplay between obligation and flexibility has given rise to tension in various for a of the WTO, including in committee work, negotiations and dispute settlement. This paper brings together these three distinct strands of WTO work to illustrate core aspects of the international standards debate. In our analysis, we first briefly outline the nature of the discipline in the TBT Agreement itself; next, we describe where and how the discussion arises in the WTO; and, finally, we explore under what circumstances international standards contribute to regulatory convergence and the challenges they face in this regard. We propose that greater regulatory convergence could be fostered through a renewed focus on the procedures used by international standardizing bodies (the how) and greater emphasis on robust technical/scientific underpinnings of the standards themselves (the what).
Journal of World Trade