The Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) at its meeting on 2-3 April addressed a proposal by Canada on enhancing the transparency of special & differential treatment (S&D) of developing countries under the SPS Agreement. The proposal was generally seen as "one piece of the jigsaw puzzle" to address developing countries' difficulties in keeping up and conforming with SPS notifications.

Also of interest at the meeting were discussions on the EC's complaint regarding the Australian approval and risk assessment procedures, and a report submitted by China highlighting poor compliance by most countries with notification procedures.

One step forward in addressing S&D in the SPS Agreement

The Canadian proposal, adopted in principle at the SPS meeting, consists of two components (G/SPS/W/127, available at http://docsonline.wto.org/). First, Members that may be affected by a notified measure under the SPS Agreement are encouraged to enter into bilateral consultations with the notifying Member in an effort to address any issues of concern. The result of these consultations could be specific S&D treatment with respect to the notified measure or other mutually-acceptable solutions. Second, in order to ensure transparency, the result of the bilateral discussions would be reported in an Addendum submitted by the notifying Member, specifying the S&D treatment requested and provided. Canada stressed that its proposal aimed to recognise the practical difficulties of anticipating in advance who the importers would be for what products.

The proposal had been submitted in response to a suggestion by Egypt to include a box in the notification form for countries to state what S&D measures were included to facilitate compliance with the notified SPS measure (see BRIDGES Weekly, 26 March 2002). While welcoming Canada's proposal, several countries, including Egypt, the Philippines, Malaysia and India, noted the need to continue discussions on this issue, both with regard to the procedural details of the notification procedure and other measures that could be implemented to support developing countries' efforts to comply with SPS measures. These countries have repeatedly expressed concerns over difficulties to pinpoint and react to notifications of particular concern to them due to the large number of notifications submitted by Members.

Other matters

The EC, supported by several South-East Asian countries and others, raised concerns regarding Australia's lengthy risk assessment and approval process. The disagreement had attracted significant attention in the past days due to the timing of the announcement that the EU would initiate dispute settlement proceedings in this regard. Even before launching the proceedings, which are now underway, the European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy had made public the EU's intention to challenge "Australia's protectionist food import regime". The announcement was made on 31 March, the deadline for finalising the agriculture modalities, prompting Australia to accuse the EU of diversionary tactics to detract attention from its intransient position and the resulting lack of progress in the agriculture negotiations. Rather than dealing with specific products, the EC has requested the WTO to examine the Australian quarantine system for imports of agricultural products, the slow speed of which has repeatedly frustrated a number of countries in the past.

According to a report submitted by China at the meeting, many Members do not give the recommended 60 days comment period for routine SPS notifications. Members agreed that they should conduct informal discussions on how to address this issue. China had compiled the report in response to criticism of its notification practices by Canada and the US at the November SPS Committee meeting. At the meeting, China, supported by Mexico, had noted widespread problems with regard to late notifications that allowed only limited time for comment. Similar criticism had also arisen in the context of China's biotech regulations. Argentina, Canada and the US had criticised the country for not providing sufficient time for comments and compliance when publishing the regulations on 7 January 2002 and for not developing the regulations in a transparent way (BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 4 April 2002).

ICTSD reporting; "European Union to challenge Australia's protectionist food import regime at WTO," EU PRESS RELEASE, 31 March 2003.