The legal policy space of WTO members for import protection under the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA)

The conclusion of the AOA in the Uruguay Round has imposed tensions between its two conflicting objectives: achieving agricultural trade liberalization and providing necessary protection for domestic farmers against import surges. Policy space has been granted to WTO Members through various legal mechanisms to help them to achieve balance between offensive interests (opening the agricultural markets of other Members) and defensive interests (protecting their own domestic markets). The PhD thesis aims to answer three fundamental questions: what kinds of policy space for import protection do Members have under the AoA? How they use their policy space to protect their sensitive agricultural products or key defensive interests? Is the policy space enough for Members, particularly for Recently Acceded Members (RAMs)? With these questions in mind, the thesis adopts a comprehensive and comparative approach to examine the broad landscape of WTO Members’ legal policy space in market access and domestic support. A social-legal approach is also adopted to examine the three dimensions of this substantial issue: what, how and why. A few case studies are given in order to better understand the relevant WTO rules and their applications. The thesis also examines the legality of the “WTO plus” obligations and “WTO minus” rights allegation for RAMs from both the procedural and the substantive aspect of the claim. Based on detailed analyses, the thesis draw conclusions on the definition of policy space for import protection and Members’ policy space in border protection and in domestic support. It also gives some recommendations on future negotiations.

Jaar van publicatie:2019

Trefwoorden:Doctoral thesis

Toegankelijkheid:Open