International Trade Reporter
GENEVA--The World Trade Organization has announced a further delay in the circulation of a long-awaited dispute settlement panel ruling concerning Canada's challenge to a French ban on asbestos.
In a notice distributed to WTO members March 7, the three-member panel's chairman, New Zealander Adrian Macey, said the panel had expected to finalize its report by March but that it needed more time to complete its work. The panel now expects to issue a final ruling to the parties in the dispute sometime in June, Macey added.
The panel had originally been expected to issue its decision by last December. Under WTO rules, a panel is required to issue its decisions within nine months after its members are appointed and its terms of reference established.
The panel was established at Canada's request on Nov. 25, 1998, but its composition and terms of reference were not decided until March 29, 1999.
The asbestos ruling is being seen as a litmus test of the WTO's sensitivity to environmental and public health concerns. At issue is a French ban, implemented in December 1996, on the manufacture, import, and sale of asbestos. Canada is the world's second-largest producer and world's leading exporter of chrysotile asbestos, the main form of asbestos currently in commercial use.
Canada claims the ban has no justification on public health grounds and violates WTO rules, in particular Article 2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, which requires members to ensure that technical regulations do not create an unnecessary obstacle to trade, and Articles 2, 3, and 5 of the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, which require that measures to protect human, animal, and/or plant life be based on sufficient scientific evidence and backed by a proper risk assessment.
At a panel hearing held earlier this year with officials from Canada and the European Union (which is representing France in the dispute), experts called in by the panel unanimously agreed that chrysotile asbestos is a carcinogen, according to trade officials familiar with the case. Among those presenting evidence was an official with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The United States is backing the EU and France as a third party in the dispute.
Canada's chief defense is that chrysotile asbestos is perfectly safe if recommended control and management practices are followed.
The EU is scheduled to implement its own ban on chrysotile asbestos, the last form of asbestos still allowed for use within the 15-nation trade bloc, starting in January 2005.
By Daniel Pruzin:
