Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States

With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC

or plant life or health are increasingly a common feature of PTAs. Here it is important to

distinguish carefully between:

Standards

Regulations

Conformity assessment/ Testing and certification

Standards are often held up as an example of a non-tariff barrier to trade, and a barrier whose

relative importance is growing with the decline in tariffs. However, standards have a different

policy objective as opposed to discrimination against foreign goods. Standards represent a

quasi-regulatory means of pursuing important public policy objectives such as environmental

protection, consumer safety and food quality. Standards in principle should not be seen as

barriers to trade: they are essentially definitions of a standardised unit process or product.

Technical regulations may make certain standards mandatory. They may in fact impose

requirements that are not based on standards as such, although the WTO TBT and SPS rules

require regulations that may affect trade to be "based on" international standards where these

exist unless a country can show a special national objective which the international standards

cannot achieve. Conformity assessment rules specify how it is to be established whether or not

regulations have been complied with. The policy objective should therefore not be to eliminate

standards but to make them more efficient and cost effective.

FTAs can contain provisions for Harmonisation, Mutual recognition or National Treatment that

go beyond this on any of the three items but few do except for the EU itself. They generally

provide for consultation and voluntary cooperation. Two exceptions are the EU Turkey CU

which required harmonisation of technical but had to wait 10 years for mutual recognition

conformity assessment; and the EU-Korea FTA which deals with mutual recognition of

conformity assessment for cars and electronics TTIP promised a lot in this area but

negotiations are moving slowly. The latest EU position papers for example say that

harmonisation or MR of regulations is not possible across the board even though a large part

of the reported gains (IFO 2013) were said to come in this sector. On cars the EU position is

that even if mutual recognition of technical requirements were achieved there could be no MR

of testing and certification. So automotive products would have to be tested again in the EU,

even if this was using US methods.

("Beyond the WTO" An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade Agreements," The World

Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(11), pages 1565-1588, November2Henrik Horn & Petros C.

Mavroidis & André Sapir, 2010.