G/SPS/W/277  
 
14 March 2014  
(14-1610)  Page: 1/4  
Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures  Original: English/French/Spanish  
 
FOURTH REVIEW OF THE OPERATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AGREEMENT ON 
THE APPLICATION OF SANITARY AND PHYTOSANITARY MEASURES 
TRANSPARENCY UNDER THE SPS AGREEMENT (ARTICLE 7 AND ANNEX B) 
Submission by Chile, the European Union, Morocco and Norway 
The following communication, received on 13 March 2014, is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegations of Chile, the Europe an Union, Morocco and Norway. 
 
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1  INRODUCTION 
1.1.  As part of the Fourth Review of the Oper ation and Implementation of the Agreement on the 
Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Meas ures (the SPS Agreemen t), pursuant to the 
provisions of Article 12.7 of the SPS Agreement, the Secretariat has invited Members to identify 
issues they wish to consider in the context of th e review and to make submissions on this issue by 
14 March 2014.
1 
1.2.  At the SPS Committee meeting of October 201 3, the European Union (EU) proposed to the 
Committee to review the implementation of the tr ansparency provisions of the SPS Agreement, 
including the possibility of further developing the "Recommended Procedures for Implementing the Transparency Obligations of the SPS Agreement" (Recommended Procedures) in effect since 
1 December 2008.
2 
1.3.  To follow up the discussion at the October 2013 meeting of the SPS Committee, the European 
Union submitted on 17 December 2013 a general communication on transparency (Article 7 and 
Annex B of the SPS Agreement).3 
1.4.  Chile, the European Union, Morocco and Norway share the opinion that transparency is one of 
the cornerstones of the World Trade Organisation  (WTO) and a fundamental tool for the effective 
implementation and application of the rights and obligations of Members under the SPS 
Agreement. This principle, which allows interested Members to become acquainted with the SPS measures adopted by other Members, serves to mitigate regulatory obstacles that may arise 
among trading partners through greater clarity, pred ictability and reliability of information. If, and 
when, correctly applied, transparency in the SPS field facilitates international trade and helps to 
avoid disputes. 
1.5.  Transparency provisions in relation to  the SPS Agreement have already been discussed 
during previous reviews. This led to a number of recommendations being adopted which are now 
being applied with varying levels of success.  
                                               
1 G/SPS/W/270. 
2 G/SPS/7/Rev.3. 
3 G/SPS/GEN/1293. G/SPS/W/277 
 
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  1.6.  The latest set of Recommended Procedures entered into force more than five years ago.4 
They remain the reference for best practice for notification procedures and are followed, in the main, by the vast majority of Members. 
1.7.  With the accession of new Members to th e WTO and the rapidly growing overall number of 
SPS notifications
5, some issues – treated in the Recommended Procedures - are becoming crucially 
important in order to adequately meet the following transparency provisions in practice: 
a. the quality and completeness of the information provided in the notification; 
b. the timeliness of the publication of regular and emergency notifications; 
c. interactions with trading partners (handling of comments); and 
d. availability to other Members, at any given time, of all measures adopted and proposed 
by a WTO Member. 
1.8.  Each of the transparency aspects mentione d above may be further improved without creating 
new obligations or increasing the administrative burden for WTO Members. Efforts should focus on 
providing precise information at an early stage, allowing, if needed, for a real regulatory dialogue 
to take place before the measure is adopted and en ters into force. During this process, trading 
partners should be kept proper ly informed of all SPS measur es in force at any one time. 
2  NOTIFICATION OF MEASURES 
2.1.  In accordance with the SPS Agreement and the Recommended Procedures, Members shall 
notify changes in their SPS measures that are: 
a. generally applicable, i.e. excluding individual permits and approvals addressed to a 
single business operator; 
b. the content of which is not substantially the same as the content of an international 
standard, guideline or recommendation; and 
c. are expected to have a significant effect on trade in a specific product, group of products 
or products in general, between two or more Members. 
2.2.  Furthermore, Members are encouraged to  notify those regulations that are based on, 
conform to, or are substantially the same as an international standard, guideline or 
recommendation. 
2.3.  An analysis of all the notifications issued between 15 September 2012 and 15 September 
2013 shows that nearly half of the regular notifications did not identify the relevant international standard, guideline or recommendation.
6 This omission impacts on the quality and completeness of 
the information provided in the notification. 
2.4.  Proper identification of the relevant international standard, guideline or recommendation and 
a clear indication whether the notified measure conforms or deviates from it (and if so, how and 
why), will assist in the monitoring of the use of international standards. 
3  PROVISION OF INFORMATION 3.1.  Where international standards exist and the proposed measures deviate from them 
substantially, the notifying Member should clearly signal this to its trading partners and explain 
how and why the proposed measures deviate from the relevant international standard (details in box 8 of the template for regular notifications and in box 9 of the template for emergency notifications). It has been observed that some notifications were incorrectly presented as 
measures conforming to an international standard, guideline or recommendation when this was 
not the case. This could be misleading and should be looked into. 
                                               
4 G/SPS/7/Rev.3. 
5 Over 16,000 notifications since 1995 till the end of 2013; this calculation is based on information 
provided in G/SPS/GEN/804/Rev.6, page 3, point 3.6. 
6 G/SPS/GEN/804/Rev.6, page 9, point 3.21. G/SPS/W/277 
 
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  3.2.  There is a need for the information provided in a notification to be clear and comprehensible. 
3.3.  Availability of translations of notified documents into official WTO languages is a matter of 
concern. According to point 26 of the Recommended Procedures, "developed country Members shall, if requested, provide copies of such do cuments or, in case of voluminous documents, a 
translation of a summary, in one of the three WTO working languages". 
3.4.  Translations should be of an appropriate qu ality and should be provided within a reasonable 
timeframe. If only summaries are available they should include all relevant information on the 
measure affecting trading partners, in particular, identifying the parts which deviate from 
international standards, guidelines or recommendations. 
3.5.  The mechanism for Members to inform each other of the availability of unofficial translations 
of notified SPS measures into one of the official WTO languages, which was established by the SPS 
Secretariat in 2004, requires practical implementa tion. From the date of its creation in 2004 until 
mid-September 2013, only 17 supplementary SPS noti fications containing unofficial translations 
were circulated – only one of which was in 2013. 
3.6.  There is a lack of clarity with respect to qu alifying measures as trade facilitating (footnote 5 
in the Recommended Procedures). Due to differing  interpretations, practices with respect to 
classifying a measure as trade facilitati ng vary substantially among Members. 
4  TIMING OF NOTIFICATIONS 
4.1.   According to paragraph 5(a) of Anne x B of the SPS Agreement and Chapter B of the 
Recommended Procedures "Members shall publish a notice at an early stage in such a manner as 
to enable interested Members to become acquainted with a proposal to introduce a particular 
regulation". As confirmed by the SPS Secretariat in its annual report on transparency, compliance 
with this provision is neither monitored nor reported.
7 
4.2.  It has been noted that a significant number of regular notifications still indicate a date of 
entry into force of the relevant measure which is prior to the date of the notification itself. 
Furthermore, these notifications often concern measures that are not trade facilitating or measures that differ from international standards. 
4.3.  Establishing a 60-day comment period was one of the recommended practices agreed by the 
SPS Committee, in 1996, in the very first Recommended Procedures.
8 It is well known that the 
recommendation was established in order to allow all trading partners sufficient time to become acquainted with the measures notified by other Members and for a regulatory dialogue, if 
appropriate, to be held. 
4.4.  A recent analysis by the SPS Secretariat indicates that one out of four regular notifications 
did not provide a comment period, without providing a reason for this.
9 Even though there is no 
recommendation in the Recommended Procedures to provide such a justification, having such an 
explanation would go a long way to helping to understand why the 60-day recommended period is not observed. Furthermore, extensions of the co mment periods are often granted on a bilateral 
basis to the requesting Member alone, while this  is not automatically offered and communicated to 
all Members through the WTO system. 
4.5.  Emergency notifications of SPS measures (i n accordance with paragraph 6 of Annex B of the 
WTO SPS Agreement) are another key area where current practices should also be reviewed. The 
template for the notification of emergency measures offers the possibility to describe the nature of 
the urgent problem(s) and the reason for the urgent action (in box 8). The lack of a common understanding of what exactly constitutes an emergency notification or how it should be treated, 
tends to mean that current notification practices vary substantially among Members. It has been 
noted that occasionally the justification for the emergency is quite unclear and the reason for the urgency is not duly justified. Often the notification is also issued long after the emergency is 
                                               
7 G/SPS/GEN/804/Rev.6, page 13, point 5.1.a. 
8 G/SPS/7, page 5, point 11. 
9 G/SPS/GEN/804/Rev.6, page 10, point 3.30. G/SPS/W/277 
 
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  announced and little opportunity is given to the affected Members to react to the notification or to 
mitigate the conditions that gave rise to the emergency. 
4.6.  Emergency measures shall not be maintained endlessly. If they are introduced based on the 
available pertinent information, on a provisional basis as foreseen in Article 5, paragraph 7 of the 
SPS Agreement, the Member imposing the measure should obtain additional information necessary 
for a more objective assessment of the risk and review the SPS measure accordingly "within a reasonable period of time". If, due to the circ umstances, an emergency measure is transformed 
into a "regular" measure, after an objective, scien tific assessment of risk, a new notification – as 
yet not foreseen in the Recommended Procedures - could be recommended to allow the transformed measure to be brought to the attention of other Members. 
5  HANDLING OF COMMENTS 
5.1.  The provisions of Chapter E of the Recommended Procedures regarding the handling of 
comments received to a particular notification are rather general. While the Recommended Procedures foresee the development of a regulatory  dialogue to resolve SPS issues using existing 
tools and other instruments offered by the SPS Agreement, it is nevertheless often not the case in 
practice. 
5.2.  It is not sufficient to merely provide a comment period to trading partners. The comments 
received ought to indeed be taken into account, in tegrated into the legislative work, responded to, 
and if not accepted, then a justification should be provided. The whole process shall take place within reasonable deadlines that should be further specified in the Recommended Procedures. This aspect is currently not being monitored nor reported by the SPS Secretariat.
10 Some Members also 
follow parallel processes to liaise with trading partners, often abandoning the WTO route once the 
initial notification is made, thus not replying within the WTO framework to comments made. 
5.3.  The mechanism to make comments available to other Members also has the potential to be 
reinforced.11 This was already proposed by Egypt during the 3rd Review in 2010 and deserves the 
further reflection of the Committee.12 
6  COMPREHENSIVE INFORMATION ABOUT SPS MEASURES IN FORCE 
6.1.  Availability, at any given time, of all SPS measures adopted by any Member is another area 
of concern. The difficulties created by the insufficient access to such information pose a major obstacle to international trade. 
6.2.  It happens sometimes that a Member, due to the comments received, decides to postpone a 
draft measure for a long time, or to not adopt it at all, but this decision is not communicated via 
the WTO notification system to all Members. 
6.3.  Often Members do not make information on their SPS measures easily available to the public 
via, for example a dedicated website, with lists and summaries of applicable SPS import 
conditions. In addition this information is not kept updated in real time. 
7  CONCLUSION 
7.1.  The above constitutes a preliminary and not an exhaustive list. Clearly there are other 
transparency provisions in the Recommended Procedures which may also merit being looked into. 
7.2.  Chile, the European Union, Morocco and Norway welcome suggestions related to the 
transparency provision of the SPS Agreement that other Members may wish to submit for 
consideration under the 4
th Review. 
 
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10 G/SPS/GEN/804/Rev.6, page 13, point 5.1.d. 
11 G/SPS/7/Rev.3, page 5, point 32. 
12 G/SPS/53, page 8, point 41.