| The environment in which human beings live has profoundly changed or even ruined ever since the middle of the last century because of the development of industry, and a voice of "environment protection" has become louder and louder. Today, as the economic interests of the world have been more and more integrative, free trade is always the general trend. But new problems keep emerging along with the development of the relationship between environment and trade, which urgently needs to be settled. To mediate the conflict between environment and trade and to balance both the interest of environment protection and free trade, members of the WTO resort to the neutral standard—science. They stipulate in the SPS Agreement that members shall perform the obligation of providing sufficient scientific evidence when adopting or maintaining any SPS measures.The main purpose of this article is to analyze the basic rights and obligations of the members under the SPS Agreement. Due to the limitation of the scope of this article, the main emphases will be given on the different interpretations of Article 2.2 of SPS Agreement and on the influence of these differences on the basic rights and obligations of members.Though explicit at the first glance, Article 2.2 actually is ambiguous in meaning and can be given diversiform interpretations. This can make against to settle the disputes between members with regard to SPS measures and can do no help to ascertain the basic rights and obligations of members. This article will try to interpret some words which are ambiguous in meaning, thereby to discuss the basic rights and obligations of members from the angle of Article 2.2 of SPS Agreement.This article begins with a short prolegomenon, and its main body is composed with three parts and then ends up with a conclusion.The subject of Part 1 is "the status and function of basic rights and obligations in SPS Agreement", which gives a brief introduction to the provisions of basic rights and... |
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