Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 16 • 16th September 2005

WTO Hormones Dispute Focuses on Procedural Issues

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The WTO panel assessing a complaint brought by the EC against continued trade sanctions by the US and Canada on certain EU exports (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 2 September 2005) gathered for its first meeting from 12 to 15 September in Geneva. The EC claims that the ongoing sanctions are illegal after it had implemented new measures in 2003 to comply with the 1998 WTO ruling in which the Appellate Body agreed with the US and Canada that the EU ban was in violation of the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS). The panel proceedings have been dominated by procedural questions on how best to address the continued sanctions and very few substantive references have been made regarding risk assessment, the scientific evidence or SPS rules. The question whether new scientific evidence provided by the EC has been used in a satisfactory risk assessment process, and whether this assessment has been made according to the description of a risk assessment in the SPS Agreement, was not argued before the panel. Instead, the parties disagreed on whether the EC, or the US and Canada, are responsible for bringing a case. The EC argues that if the US and Canada thinks that the EC is not in compliance, they should bring a non-compliance case. The US and Canada, on the other hand, have been urging the EC to bring a compliance case if they believe that their 2003 measures have brought them into compliance and that the sanctions should be lifted. At stake is where the burden of proof lies — whether Members, and which ones, should have to prove compliance or otherwise with a WTO ruling. These proceedings were open to the public — being broadcast through closed-circuit television to an audience of between 20 to 100 trade negotiators, NGOs, media and academics at the WTO — after the panel members accepted a joint request by the three parties.

For further information on the proceedings, see Bridges Weekly, 14 Sept 2005, http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/05-09-14/story3.htm.

ICTSD Reporting.