Erich Vranes

Markus Gehring, Nachhaltigkeit durch Verfahren im Welthandelsrecht. Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeitsprüfungen und die WTO

Environmental assessments of international and national trade measures have come to be increasingly employed in international and domestic decision-making in recent years. Such assessments, which are known under various names such as “environmental (impact) assessments”, “strategic environmental assessments”, “sustainability impact assessments” and the like, have tended to evolve in their coverage, and today sometimes comprise examinations not only of the environmental, but also of the possible social and economic impacts of trade measures.1 The relevance of such review mechanisms for unilateral, bilateral and multilateral trade policy-making seems to have been more removed from the limelight than other aspects of the “trade and environment” debate. A book which is intended to help fill this gap is Markus Gehring’s doctoral thesis, which is organised into four parts. Part 1 addresses legal principles relevant for sustainability assessments of trade measures, Part 2 examines various types of assessment mechanisms used in national and international contexts, Part 3 deals with the possibility of incorporating assessment mechanisms of this sort into WTO law, and Part 4 contains some very brief concluding remarks.

Comments on Joost Pauwelyn’s Paper: ‘How to Win a WTO Dispute Based on Non-WTO Law?’

The following comments concentrate on the areas of disagreement in the positions of Joost Pauwelyn on the one side and Gabrielle Marceau and Anastasios Tomazos on the other. As Joost Pauwelyn and Gabrielle Marceau are two of the main proponents in the debate on the relationship between international law and the WTO system, in dealing with their views one has to address several of the core issues raised in this discussion so far. In order to better understand these issues and the respective positions presented, it appears appropriate to take some of their earlier writings into perspective.