Abstract
In the World Trade Organization (WTO), the US approach to science-based risks and trade restrictions prevailed over that of the European Union (EU). The EU, dissatisfied with the margin of action available when “relevant scientific evidence is insufficient”, largely kept intact its internal practice on marketing and importing genetically modified (GM) crops and GM-containing products. The goal of this article is to ascertain whether these regulatory preferences of the US and the EU translate into their post-Biotech external trade efforts. US and EU preferential trade agreements are scanned for rules on trade in biotechnology goods or the use of precautionary elements in regulation. It transpires that neither bloc systematically tries (or manages) to bend trade agreements to accommodate its defensive or offensive trade interests in this field. Among the possible reasons for this apparent inertia are the US confidence in the WTO baseline and the EU preference for a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to its trade-restrictive policy in this area.
Highlights
In 2009, the European Union (EU) banned all imports of flax from Canada for four months, after some genetically modified (GM) flax was detected in one shipment from Canada
I use Biotech as a cut-off point to assess how international trade law has evolved since, alongside the EU and US efforts to build their preferential trade networks. This enquiry builds on a factual baseline: the EU lost on the multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO) stage, but it has not been keen to abandon its policy on GM products; the US won
This chapter builds on, and replaces, the Mutually Agreed Solution reached by the EU and Argentina in the wake of the Biotech case,[79] and it expressly establishes regulatory coordination on issues such as LLP and asynchronous authorisations. In this FTA, the EU failed to include the non-aggression clause of the TCA with the UK, but it did not concede much to the MERCOSUR’s offensive goals. This resistance already seems to have been a decent achievement for the EU, given that the EU counterparts include Argentina, and any hope of successful negotiation on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) with Argentina was precluded by the post-Biotech settlement
Summary
In 2009, the European Union (EU) banned all imports of flax (linseed) from Canada for four months, after some genetically modified (GM) flax was detected in one shipment from Canada. The EU’s compliance is not its focus either.[6] Instead, I use Biotech as a cut-off point to assess how international trade law has evolved since, alongside the EU and US efforts to build their preferential trade networks. This enquiry builds on a factual baseline: the EU lost on the multilateral WTO stage, but it has not been keen to abandon its policy on GM products; the US won. Neither party appears to use FTAs aggressively to advance their biotechnology agenda: a low-intensity approach appears to serve them well enough
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