宪政的幻象:评WTO对区域贸易协定的“联邦宪政化”构想

Constitutional Conceits:Commentary on WTO’s Conception of the Federal Constitutionalization for RTA

针对区域贸易协定(RTA)大量涌现并侵蚀WTO多边贸易秩序的现实,学界存在一种构想,希望形成以WTO为中心、以各种RTAs为辅助的类似于'联邦主义'的'宪政性'等级化体系。然而,WTO与众多RTAs的关系特征与立足于国内社会的联邦宪政理论存在诸多不符之处。该构想的本质是将WTO的自由贸易理念抬到唯一的至高地位,而对众多RTAs承载的政治、文化、社会、安全等方面的广泛目标关注不足,从而在理念层面缺乏内在一致的体系价值基础,在现实层面也缺乏有效的整合力量和实施途径。由于忽略了实践中诸多复杂因素,该构想是一种过于简化的理论模型,国际经济法学术界不宜抱有过高期待。

Witnessing the reality that regional trade agreements proliferate and erode the multilateral trade order of WTO,there is a conception in the academic circle hoping a hierarchical system similar to“federalistic constitutional”hierarchical system will come into being with the WTO as the center and all kinds of RTAs as the auxiliary.However,the features of the relationship between WTO and numerous RTAs have a lot of discrepancies with the federal constitutional theory based on domestic societies.The nature of this conception is to elevate the free trade rationale of WTO to the sole supreme position,while paying little attention to the extensive objectives arising from political,cultural,social and security aspects carried by numerous RTAs,therefore the conception lacks internal coherent basis of systematic value at the conceptual level,and also lacks effective integration strength and implementation ways at the practical level.This conception is an over-simplified theoretical model for neglecting many complex factors in practice,and the academic circle of international economic law should not have too high expectations for it.