David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Sep 13 2007 (IPS) – Old tyres might sound like the unlikely cause of a diplomatic row over potential implications for the level of protection poor countries can offer to the environment or public health.
Yet lawyers and civil servants representing the European Union and Brazil have spent a vast number of hours poring over the minutiae of a dossier on that precise subject.

In June, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) published the findings of a panel that had adjudicated a case between the two sides over Brazil s decision to restrict imports of retreaded tyres tyres which have been used and then reprocessed. According to the panel, Brazil was provisionally justified under WTO rules to curb those imports in order to protect human and animal life.

Brazil argues that the accumulation of tyre waste poses huge ecological problems by creating a risk of soil, air and groundwater contamination. Its government also says that curbing imports of retreaded tyres is necessary in a tropical climate to guard against mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

Despite initially indicating that it was satisfied with the WTO ruling, the EU s executive, the European Commission, appealed against it earlier this month.

EU officials say that Brazil is behaving in a discriminatory manner towards Europe as it continues to import retreaded tyres from other South American countries.
But critics of the Union s trade agenda fear its real intention in launching its appeal is to ensure that poor countries do not introduce laws it regards as inimical to Western business.

The EU is trying to exploit short-term economic gain at the expense of high standards in developing countries, Juergen Maier, director of the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, told IPS.

The Commission s appeal follows a policy statement it issued in April, promising to be even more vigorous than it had been until then in demanding the removal of barriers faced by European companies wishing to operate abroad.

It undertook to make greater use of international dispute settlement mechanisms, pointing out that this approach had already paid dividends in recent years. The EU executive had succeeded in challenging a value added tax system in Colombia designed to protect local car manufacturers against imports, and a Mexican law on diesel emissions that would have prevented European vehicles being sold in Mexico.

Retreaded tyres are certainly not a key sector for Europe, they are a marginal one, Maier added. That is why this is far more important than just this one case. We are worried that it could set a precedent.

Ironically, the Commission has in the past had to defend measures taken in Europe on health and environmental grounds against challenges mounted at the WTO level.

Since 1996, for example, the EU and the U.S. have been at loggerheads over the former s ban on hormone-treated beef. The EU has claimed that the measure is justified because of advice it has obtained from scientists that meat containing a substance called oestradiol should not be placed on the market as consuming it would endanger human health.

Eivind Hoff from the Brussels office of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said there is a bit of a double standard between the EU s stance in the beef hormone case and the action it is taking against Brazil.

Green campaigners suggest it is wrong for the EU to seek to undermine the WTO panel s ruling in the WTO case, when it could prove useful in defending Europe s own environmental policies at a later date.

We are appealing for caution, Hoff said. The EU shouldn t shoot itself in the foot, nor should it restrain the ability of countries to adopt and implement good environmental measures.

The question of what action can be taken to restrict trade has long been fraught.

Pascal Lamy, then Europe s commissioner for trade, identified values such as environmental protection, food safety, free education and health care, and a reluctance to sow genetically modified crops as collective preferences for the Union. Undermining values solely to promote trade would appear as a loss for the EU, he said.

In a study presented to the European Parliament Sep. 11, the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development said: Environmental and social policies in Europe are higher than in most other countries, reflecting the average income and subjective values of Europeans.

In comparison with most countries, expectations concerning environmental and social goals in Europe are probably higher than those concerning an increase in the availability of commodities. This may explain why trade rules may be seen in Europe as a potential source of constraints on its collective preferences.

The study s author Laurence Tubiana said that measures taken to restrict trade by Europe as part of the fight against climate change may distort international competition. These could include hindering Chinese cement exports to Europe because Chinese cement works emit greater quantities of greenhouse gases than those in the West.

Tubiana argued that such action would not have to be undertaken unilaterally by the EU but could be subject to negotiations and be based on a new international agreement on climate change.

The Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Switzerland has called on the EU to ensure that there is greater transparency about its use of the WTO s dispute settlement procedures. Daniel Barstow Magraw said that the best way to ensure this would be to broadcast hearings at the WTO headquarters in Geneva on the Internet.

In order to foster greater public confidence in the dispute settlement system, proceedings should be fully transparent and open to the public, he added. Open hearings have already been held at the WTO via closed-circuit television with the European Commission s consent. Web-casting involves fewer expenses and reaches a much wider audience far beyond those wealthy enough to be able to travel to Geneva for a hearing.