The Application Of The Precautionary Principle Under The Wto System

Precautionary principle is a new principle under the international environment law. This principle is used to defend the risk caused by human health,life,and nature resources. But the consequence may have some relationship with trade. Because the problems this principle solved are special and irreversible, when there is a conflict with the international trade, how to keep the balance between free trade and the public health is on the agenda. So far, some cases referred to the public health have been sent to DSB. And the decisions made by the DSB pointed the direction of how to solve the conflicts. Of course, the status of precautionary principle under the WTO legal system is the first problem should be solved. In this dissertation, the author wants to discuss the problem of what shall we look at the precautionary principle, under the multilateral trade system.There are five parts in this dissertation:In the first and second parts, the dissertation introduces the concept,the feature of precautionary principle, and its development. Then the dissertation talks about the status of the precautionary principle under the present international legislation and the practice in different countries.In the third part, the dissertation takes the cases sent to DSB for example, in order to discuss the application of precautionary principle under the WTO law.In the fourth part, the dissertation discusses about whether it is necessary to accept the precautionary principle as a general principle under the SPS Agreement. The meaning of this discussion is to note whether the WTO law is effective enough to solve the trade dispute concerning the public health, where there is a confliction between the free trade and the public health.In the fifth part, the dissertation talks about the relationship between the precautionary principle and the developing countries. In this part, the author analyses the risk might happen when applying the precautionary principle, then talks about the influence of accepting the precautionary principle on developing countries.The dissertation then comes to a conclusion that, it is a trend to protect the public health, but we should be cautious to accept the precautionary principle under the WTO laws. The SPS rules now can solve the conflicts between the public health and the free trade to some extent. This kind of protection is not good enough, but it is difficult to revise the SPS rules, so the author thinks thatin the near future, we have to depend on the WTO disputes solving system to protect the public health. Therefore the panel and the appellant body should make more efforts to interpret the laws. This might give us a legal guideline of how to keep balance between the free trade and the public health.