Conformity Assessment Procedures Research. "tbt Agreement

In the new intellectual and economic era, technologies, resources, and all kind of information are shared, and profound changes occur in the progressing of the world economic whole. However, the process to push international trade is not a level road all the way, trade liberalization and protectionism is very closely associated with each other. In the meantime, traditional and highly transparent barriers to trade gradually fade out of people's field of vision, and its substitutes are technical barriers to trade (TBT) which seem more reasonable, operable, specific, and hidden. In view of the fact that technical barriers to trade block the globalization and disorganization, both developed and developing countries suffer a lot. Therefore, on the basis of fight and compromise between government authorities of different countries, the Agreement on technical barriers to trade (TBT Agreement) is unanimously reached. In fact, the central point at TBT is the lowest tolerance when TBT are used among different countries.Because of the double-faced behavior of TBT, ununiformity in technology development among different countries, and temporality in unification of technology standards, it objectively makes the regulations of TBT relative and flexible. Countries openly do protection trade in disguised form for their own benefits via reasonableness in technology. TBT appear in three forms: administration laws and regulations, standards, and procedures for qualification assessment. The logical relationship inside the three forms reflects if the procedures for qualification assessment are the last link in the chain of technology regulations starting at standards. Moreover, the realization of technology regulations and standards remains to be based on executing the procedures for qualification assessment. Therefore, the procedures for qualification assessment play very important role in TBT Agreement.Based on seriously screening, the European Economic Community (EEC) is selected as the reference in this thesis. By comparison, analysis, and actual cases, the successful experience of the procedures for qualification assessment in EEC is evaluated and analyzed. Considering the fact that China is a mainly resource-consumption, labor-concentration developing country, the method how to build up a firewall is proposed.In the first part, the whole structure of procedures for qualification assessment is introduced through briefly reviewing the origin of procedures for qualification assessment and analyzing the basic concepts. It is also proposed how to rationally treat the positive and negative roles of the procedures for qualification assessment. These will be helpful not only to understand the essence of procedures for qualification assessment, but also to realize the development trends of international mutual recognition system and actively express our ideas in coordinating international qualifications assessment.In the second part, it mainly involves the related rules and regulations of procedures for qualification assessment in TBT Agreement. Based on the comments of expert groups and appeal organizations on the law cases of American Gasoline Standard and EEC imposing restrictions on importing beef, some personal understanding is put forward.In the third part, it focuses on Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH), which enter into force on 1 June 2007 in EEC. By evaluating and analyzing EEC rules and regulations, such as REACH, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), it is revealed how to form TBT and how to develop further in global range.In the background of trade liberalization and globalization, TBT have double-faced behavior, which make TBT as "double-edge swords". "Cooperation and win-win" is the real demand in the international community. The qualification assessment will offer broad space for international coordination, which is based on objective, impartial, scientific detection data. In the fourth part, the advantages of the international mutual recognition system and the difficulty reality is analyzed objectively.In the fifth part, by comparison to Conformite Europeenne (CE) Recognition, the qualification assessment system in China is analyzed. Several suggestions how to improve the qualification assessment in China are also given.