An Overview of the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement

The TBT Agreement was established during the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations in 1994 and came into effect in January 1995.

• The Agreement is considered the multilateral successor to the Standards Code, which was signed by 32 GATT contracting parties at the end of the Tokyo Round of Trade Negotiations in 1979.
• The TBT Agreement aims to ensure that technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures are not discriminatory.
• The Agreement's primary objective is to ensure that technical standards and specifications for imported goods from a member country do not pose unnecessary trade barriers for the exporting country.
• However, the Agreement recognises that member countries need to implement specific regulations and policy measures to protect human health, safety, and the environment.
• The Agreement also encourages members to base their measures on global standards to facilitate international trade.
• The TBT Agreement outlines rules and procedures for the development, adoption, and application of voluntary product standards, mandatory technical regulations, and procedures (such as testing or certification) to determine whether a product meets such standards or regulations.
• The Agreement aims to prevent the use of technical requirements as unnecessary barriers to trade.
• While it applies to a wide range of agricultural and industrial products, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and specifications for government procurement are covered under separate agreements.
• The TBT Agreement shares the same fundamental principles of non-discrimination, encouraging predictability of market access and technical assistance (TA) and special and differential (S&D) treatment for developing member countries.

Objectives of the TBT Agreement

The TBT Agreement has two main objectives:

1. To ensure that technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures do not create unnecessary obstacles to international trade.
2. To allow WTO members enough regulatory discretion to protect human, animal and plant life and health, national security, the environment, consumers, and other policy interests.

The term 'technical barriers to trade' generally refers to:

1. Mandatory product regulations
2. Voluntary product standards
3. Conformity assessment procedures (procedures designed to verify a product’s conformity with mandatory regulations or voluntary standards)

The TBT Agreement strives to ensure that these technical requirements do not unnecessarily hamper global trade. The Agreement seeks to strike a balance between facilitating smooth international trade by regulating such technical non-tariff barriers and allowing countries to enact product regulations for the welfare of health, environment, consumers, etc. The TBT Agreement attempts to maintain a balance between preventing protectionism and respecting the rights of members to enact product regulations for legitimate public policy purposes.

The Agreement ensures that standards, technical regulations, and conformity assessment procedures are developed and applied in a non-discriminatory manner.