EU and WTO Law - How Tight Is the Legal Straitjacket for Environmental Product Regulation?

Do free trade rules impose a legal straitjacket on product-oriented environmental measures? While environmental law increasingly relies on product regulations as an important policy instrument, supranational economic law, as laid down within the framework of the EU and the WTO, tends to view such regulations as trade barriers which are to be removed as far as possible. This apparent contradiction between environmental protection and trade liberalization has been the subject of much political and academic debate. This book aims to help clarify the legal boundaries of the policy space that remains open to public authorities at the national and supranational level to regulate trade in products in pursuit of legitimate objectives of environmental protection and sustainable development. The contributors examine the impact of free trade rules on product regulation at the interface between national law, EU law and WTO law, as well as between WTO law and international environmental law.