Research On The Social Labelling Legal System Under WTO System

Social lebelling schemes, originating in USA, have been developed and administered by NGOs, such as trade union, customer union and producers, aiming to protect the human rights of labors. Recently, the great impact of social labelling schemes has draw much concern of the government in some developed countries, and has received their support, encouragement and even some local governments have partly participated in the programs. Belgian is the first government which passed a bill that providing for the establishment of a social labelling to be administered and funded by public authorities and until now it has been the only one. Although, the main developed countries and region, such as USA, EU, have not established the program, their experts have done a lot of research on the subject. The developed countries are trying hard to establish the social labelling legal system under the WTO.The thesis introduces the concept, contents, operation process of the social labelling schemes, explains the opposition towards the subject between the developed countries and the developing ones and the reasons causing the opposition, analyzes the feasibility of establishing social labelling legal system under WTO, and finally it elaborates the influence to China's trade and gives some strategic advice for Chinese government and exporters.The thesis is composed by five chapters except the introduction and conclusion, and main contents of each part are as follows:The introduction sets forth the significance of the topic, the status of the study at home and broad, the research framework and the main opinions of the thesis.Chapterl introduces the basic knowledge of the social labelling, namely the concept, main content, types, operation process and the function of the social labelling.Chapter2 analyzes the attitudes and its cause of the developed countries toward the social labelling, introduces the Belgian law which creates a voluntary social labelling program and the opposition showed by the developing countries. Chapter3 discusses the legality of government-sponsored social labelling initiati-ves under the WTO agreements. It then moves to analyze the feasibility of establishing social labelling legal system under WTO.Chapter4 makes specific suggestion on how to establish the legal system of social labelling under WTO, including specific principles, institutions, norms of entities and procedures.Chapter 5 analyzes the impact may be brought to China's trade by the social labelling schemes and makes some recommendations.Finally, it is the conclusion of the thesis:It's much likely that more social labelling schemes will be sponsored by the developed countries'government. Chinese government and exporters should do more research on the subject, and treat social labelling scheme objectively; the much more important thing is to explore the response.