The WTO Context for Sustainability Labelling and Certification

Our work provides a legal survey of the way in which the WTO system qualifies sustainable labelling and certification schemes. In fact, in principle, such trade instruments could be considered as obstacle to international commerce. The essay illustrates all the work made within the TBT Committee and the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment, so as to device labelling and certification schemes in a way that may be considered as compatible with free trade rules; it provides all the pertinent GATT/WTO case law, and it analyzes tha main labelling and certification schemes presented by WTO Members for discussion in the special WTO bodies in Geneva. It reaches the conclusion that, provided they are deviced on the basis of the principles of proportionality and international cooperation, the trade information instruments under consideration may represent an appropriate, and WTO compatible, answer to conjugate free trade and the respect of the environment and core labour standards.