WTO转基因农产品贸易争端与欧盟转基因产品管制立法评析

欧盟转基因产品管制体制经历了15年的历史演变,其间的关注重点可归结为“转基因生物向环境的有意释放”和“转基因食品”两个方面,目前的欧盟转基因产品管制立法则以核准程序、标签和可追踪性为中心。虽然WTO专家组“中期报告”认为欧盟及其成员国对转基因产品的“事实上的禁止”没有符合《SPS协定》的有关要求,也否认了相关的多边环境协定与本案的关联性,但专家组并未对生物技术产品在总体上安全与否做出结论,也没有认定欧盟转基因产品管制体制在总体上与WTO规则相冲突。

The dispute between the EU and the US on GM Agri-products was the first case deah with by the WTO mechanism on international trade of GM products. As the core of the dispute, the GM regulation regime has experienced 15 years of evolution, focusing on ＂ deliberate release into environment＂ and ＂ GM food＂. The contemporary GM regulation regime of EU, however, focuses on the following three issues： authorization, labeling and traceability. Although the ＂Interim Report＂ from WTO Panel confirmed that the ＂de facto moratorium＂ adopted by EC and some of its members did not comply with the SPS agreement, and disregarded the relevance between the dispute and MEAs, it did not come to a conclusion about the safety of bio-products as a whole. Moreover, the Panel did not question the legitimacy of EU＇ s GM regulation regime as a whole in the WTO context.