WTO vs. Europe: Less - and Also More - Than it Seems

Written by Brian Tokar

Monday, 20 February 2006

In the late Spring of 2003, amidst the political fallout of "Old Europe’s" refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threw down a gauntlet that threatened to permanently aggravate transatlantic hostilities. As a political favor to its agribusiness allies in the Midwestern farm belt, the administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking to overturn Europe’s de facto five-year moratorium on approvals of new genetically engineered crop varieties. The governments of Argentina and Canada also signed on to the complaint; together these three countries grow roughly 80 percent of the world’s genetically engineered crops.

Just last week, the substance of the WTO’s decision on this case was released to the parties involved, and almost immediately leaked to the press. As nearly everyone expected, the WTO’s anonymous three-judge panel ruled that some of Europe’s restrictions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) violate global trade rules, and that any attempt to regulate this technology requires strict compliance with the trade body’s exacting and often industry-biased scientific risk assessment procedures. Perhaps more than any previous WTO decision, the ruling confirmed many people’s fears about the role this secretive and unaccountable trade body would play in today’s world.