ABSTRACT

One category of voluntary approaches to environmental governance is ecolabels used to nudge consumers towards purchasing environmentally friendly products. The purpose of this article is to critically review the trade law implications of voluntary ecolabels, with special reference to the EU Ecolabel. For a long time, the lack of trade disputes related to the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) before the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body rendered research on the legality of voluntary ecolabels in trade law unavoidably speculative. Consequently, the existing scholarship has failed to inform the environment law community clearly how trade law views voluntary ecolabels. This article aims to fill the gap in the literature by evaluating the consistency of the EU Ecolabel with the TBT rules. The article concludes that it is highly unlikely that the EU Ecolabel may be found inconsistent with the TBT Agreement. Nevertheless, there remains some legal risks.

中文翻译：

---

国际贸易法中的自愿性生态标签：以欧盟生态标签为例

摘要

一类自愿的环境治理方法是用来促使消费者购买环保产品的生态标签。本文的目的是特别参考欧盟生态标签来严格审查自愿性生态标签对贸易法的影响。长期以来，由于在世界贸易组织争端解决机构面前没有与《技术性贸易壁垒协议》（TBT协议）有关的贸易争端，不可避免地进行了关于自愿性生态标签在贸易法中的合法性的研究。因此，现有的奖学金未能使环境法界清楚地了解贸易法如何看待自愿性生态标签。本文旨在通过评估欧盟生态标签与TBT规则的一致性来填补文献中的空白。文章得出的结论是，欧盟生态标签与TBT协议不一致的可能性很小。但是，仍然存在一些法律风险。