Trade Restrictive Measures of the WTO Members in a Context of Environmental Issues

This paper is aimed at studying the features of the application of trade-restrictive measures to protect the environment. Increasingly, states began to take measures aimed at protecting non-commercial interests - human, animal or plant life or health, and the conservation of exhaustible natural resources. Environmental measures do not have full protection within the WTO, therefore, in the modern world, which requires special attention to environmental problems, it is necessary to determine whether the WTO law needs to be reformed in any way to protect these purposes. The paper considers the main provisions that allow recognizing a restrictive measure in accordance with WTO law, namely the provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. The results of the study indicate that the WTO DSB recognizes the existence of environmental problems and the necessity to take appropriate measures to protect it. Nevertheless, it continues to uphold the trading goals and the principle of non-discrimination, therefore, many of the measures were not recognized as not violating the WTO law. This means that the efforts of states to protect the environment face strict compliance with the principles of the WTO, that is why the development of environmental provisions withing the WTO and harmonization with an international enviromental law are required to justify environmental measures.