Fisheries Management Standards in the WTO Fisheries Subsidies Talks: Learning How to Discipline Environmental PPMs?

Abstract

The ongoing fisheries management discussions, held at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the context of the fisheries subsidies negotiations, can influence the highly debated WTO legal parameters for the assessment of national environmental regulation addressing non-product-related processes and production methods (PPMs).This can be the case because the harmonization of fisheries management standards entails legal and political aspects analogous to the harmonization of environmentally-friendly PPMs among sovereign entities, and this process happens for the first time within the WTO. This article analyses the extent to which this harmonization process is informed by regulatory and standard-setting guidelines drawn respectively from WTO jurisprudence and an array of relevant international instruments; at the same time, it argues that the fisheries subsidies negotiations can result in the WTO taking a more definite position on the 'issue' of environmental PPMs.