Publicatie van de maand

Publicatie van de Maand: Juni 2001

	Tekst overgenomen met toestemming van: ISO-BULLETIN, juni 2001 (COMMENT) Geschreven door: Raymond Schonfeld Advises private-sector and government clients globally on TBT issues

What standardization can do to help the WTO. Ross Wraight's recommendation (ISO Bulletin, May 2001) for a more inclusive relationship between ISO and other standards bodies is welcome. It is worth underlining the potential benefits to global trade liberalization, and specifically to the World Trade Organization process, of rapid new initiatives of this kind. New initiatives are needed because, in its treatment of international standardization, the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade process is stuck. Six years and two triennial reviews after completion of the Uruguay Round, it is no nearer to resolving the argument about whose international standards should be acceptable in technical regulations, under the TBT Agreement. The debate - epitomized by the disagreement between the European Union and the USA - has become debilitating and the endless position papers tedious. The frustration of a senior Asian observer sums it up: "It is disappointing, and the only enjoyment comes from watching the Americans and the Europeans fighting each other." The European Union and the USA each advocate standardization models which have great strengths and successes to their credit. Neither is perfect. The rest of the world repeatedly indicates that it wants to use the best of both. So why the battle? Let us assume the only flattering explanation: that each side is fighting to retain what it believes to be the optimum standardization model. Even under that hypothesis, both sides make a fundamental error. They look at the debate as win-lose, assuming that a win-win result, in which both models are integrated into a dynamic new global structure, is impossible. Intellectual stone-walling has replaced action. This will never get us anywhere. All countries, but particularly in the developing world, need to know whose standards will be acceptable in technical regulations. To make progress, the WTO needs support from the standardization world. It has neither the resources nor the skills, inside its unwieldy TBT Committee composed largely of non-specialists in standardization, to change things alone. That is where ISO should come in. If there is a global body which offers proven competence in both standardization and win-win progress for the developed and developing world alike, it is ISO. To capitalize on the opportunity, ISO needs only to accept the additional mission of the top facilitator of the use of standards in the WTO model, without changing any of its core activities. ISO must find new ways of harnessing the strengths of diverse standardization bodies, of which the US protagonists are only the most vocal. There is no case for national favouritism towards the USA. The issue is global and multi-sectoral: how to build a system big enough to integrate increasingly diverse standardization activities into a global structure which is practical, consistent with WTO principles and which ensures fair representation for all WTO members. Participants in such a system will secure a permanent role in international standardization. Once those principles are accepted, programmes and structures can follow. One example of an immediate, practical proposal: to develop an operational system, under an umbrella of patronage or accreditation through ISO, which will allow a greater variety of standards bodies to prove that, if applied in regulation, their standards are neither discriminatory nor unnecessary under WTO rules. Regulators have to be involved in that, but nothing prevents ISO sharing the initiative. What is needed is a commitment, on all sides, to constructive change and constructive action.