EU and WTO Law: How Tight is the Legal Straitjacket for Environmental Product Regulation?

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Marc Pallemaerts
Asp / Vubpress / Upa, 2006 - 327 pages

Examining the impact of free trade rules, this survey aims to help clarify the legal boundaries that exist on product regulation between national law, European Union (EU) law, World Trade Organization (WTO) law, and international environmental law. Public authorities make a consistent effort to regulate trade, acting within the policy space that remains open--both at the national and supranational level--while maintaining environmental protection and sustainable development. In exploring this process, this study brings to light the conflict of interests between free trade rules and product-oriented environmental measures. While environmental law increasingly relies on product regulations as an important policy instrument, supranational economic law--as laid down within the framework of the EU and the WTO--tends to view such regulations as trade barriers, which are to be removed as far as possible. This apparent contradiction between environmental protection and trade liberalization is analyzed closely, revealing why it has been the subject of much political and academic debate.

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Contents

European Economic Integration Globalisation
7
Challenges
21
Is There Any Space Left in the EU Internal Market for National
45
WTO Legal Constraints and Opportunities for National Environ
119
Within the Law or Bypassing
135
The Transatlantic GMO Dispute Against the European Commu
175
The Regulation of
275
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Marc Pallemaerts is a senior fellow and head of the governance team at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (London and Brussels). He also teaches international and environmental law at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and was formerly a senior research fellow at the Institute for European Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is the author of Toxics and Transnational Law.

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