TBT, SPS and PS: are the wolves of protectionism disguised under sheep skin?

Abstract

The WTO Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreements aim at ruling, on a multilateral level, over measures that are created to protect human, animal or plant life or health, or the environment, but have become the 21st century model of trade barriers – the regulatory barriers to trade. The scope of the present study is to draw a parallel between the TBT and the SPS Agreements (hereinafter, TBT and SPS) in order to better understand their common grounds, intersections and distinct issues and, at the end, bring about a discussion on Private Standards (PS), which are the latest post-modern kind of regulatory measures that have distorted trade.