Study Of The Sps Agreement

The SPS Agreement (Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures), affiliated to the Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods, is a new agreement reached in Uruguay Round. Due to its special background in formulation, intended control target as well as its value orientation, it causes a lot of attention since its inception. The agreement per se and its related trade disputes brought about numerous sensitive topics, some of which touch the fundamental legal issues concerning the allocation of rights and obligations.The SPS Agreement takes it as its task to formulate sanitary and phytosanitary measures ("SPS measures") in international trade. The "SPS measures" is a special concept defined by the SPS Agreement with special connotations and can not be fully covered by concepts such as "quarantine measures", "sanitary and quarantine measures" or "propogation quarantine measures" used in domestic laws by all countries. The SPS measures came into a complicated and diabolical relationship with international trade in which they constrain and promote each other. Thanks to the special influence of SPS measures on international trade, it has increasingly mutated from the original protective measures on life and health to trade protective measures popularly adopted by nations worldwide and has become one of the most prevailing technical barriers in international trade nowadays. SPS measures are formulated in the form of both domestic law and international law. In international law, the legislative thinking is: prevention of the spread of dangerous epidemic diseases and prevention of the mutated SPS measures becoming barriers of international trade These two approaches are different yet not absolutely opposite as different legislative aims could be mutually inclusive. In relation to the general treaties or rules, the international law mechanism under an organizational structure takes on a few advantages, which makes it easier to overcome the intrinsic flaccidity of existing international law and bring its legal function into full play.The coming into being of the SPS Agreement is the result of interaction between reality and law, determined by various factors. Apart from the institutional constraint provided for by the overall WTO package arrangement, it is attributable,to a large extent, to the important achievement in the negotiation of agriculturalproducts as well as the mutual agreements of member states on the application limitation of TBT Agreement (Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade). The birth of SPS Agreement reflects prominently the continuity of international legal system construction and its game theory, and guided and influenced by all these balancing factors, the most outstanding characteristics of SPS Agreement on its valueorientation--balance, could be achieved--there is neither absolute sovereignty,nor absolute free trade.As far as the regulatory value of SPS Agreement is concerned, on one hand, as one of the subsidiary agreements of GATT 1994, it follows the basic fundamental principles of GATT 1994, much as other agreements do, and extends and develops its relevant systems and thus forms the relationship of specialized law and general law; on the other hand, it is different from other subsidiary agreements in the way that it interprets and develops Article 20(b) of GATT 1994 from a different perspective and thus forms its obvious subsidiarity and relative independence with Article 20(b) of GATT 1994. Among all the subsidiary agreements, the SPS Agreement has its closest ties with the Agreement on Agriculture and TBT Agreement. It is a concomitant of Agreement on Agriculture and constitutes a part of the agreement. Meanwhile, whether in the static regulatory design or in the dynamic application, it has both separate and reciprocal ties with the TBT Agreement.The enforcement of SPS Agreement has its special connotations. During the recent eight years, its enforcement effect has been reflected from various levels and perspectives, including duty perfo...