International Rules and EU Food Law

Starting from an outline of the multilateral legal framework of the WTO Agreements, this essay focusses on the world trade law concerning the agro-food sector and the globalised market of food and beverages. It deals both with the legal rules governing the agricultural policy choices at the international level (tariffs, subsidies and decoupling), and with the discipline of the non-tariff barriers affecting food trade, together with the related problems (such as, e.g., the risk assessment, the SPS measures, the relevance of the precautionary approach). A paragraph is dedicated to the protection of IP rights in the food sector (particularly with regard to geographical indications), and the commitments of WTO member States, with an outlook to how international rules have influenced, and sometimes have affected, the creation of the EU food law system and the legislative choices of EU lawmakers. Some final considerations are made about the recent decline of the multilateral perspective, perhaps overcome by returning to a bi-, tri- or plurilateral approach.