Coronavirus, When Food Security Fractures Relations Between States
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Coronavirus, When Food Security Fractures Relations Between States

CAN RESTRICTIONS ON FOOD EXPORTS INTRODUCED BY CERTAIN COUNTRIES BE JUSTIFIED UNDER WTO RULES? PERHAPS. HOWEVER, WE MUST NOT FORGET THE LESSONS OF HISTORY: AUTARKY WAS OFTEN DISRUPTIVE FOR COUNTRIES THAT IMPLEMENTED IT

by Viktoriia Lapa, PhD fellow, Dept. of Legal Studies

The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the frontline many national law and policy issues, from the importance of national health systems to work security. Similarly, in the international arena the outbreak of COVID-19 has shown the fragility of global supply chains and global cooperation. While appeals not to destroy supply chains abound, many countries have already adopted a variety of export restrictions starting from medical supplies, protective gear and foodstuffs. All such trade restrictions might violate quantitative restrictions prohibition as prescribed by WTO rules. The question arises – can these restrictions be justified under certain exceptions foreseen in WTO law? And if so, on which grounds?

Limitations on the trade of medical supplies and protective gear are likely to be justified as necessary to protect public health under GATT(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) Article XX (b). However, reference to public health would hardly justify export restrictions on foodstuffs like a ban on exports of wheat and wheat flour.

To make one example - the WHO declared COVID -19 as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 and North Macedonia imposed prohibition of exports of wheat and meslin as well as wheat flour on 20 March. Can North Macedonia justify its restrictions on foodstuff by reference to the GATT Article XXI – a national security exception in case other WTO Members challenge its measures before the WTO Panel? The analysis under GATT Article XXI (b)(iii) involves the following steps.

First, can we consider ‘food security’ to be an ‘essential security interest’ of the State? Food security, as defined at the World Food Summit in 1996 ‘…exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.

In light of the above, WTO Members could claim that pandemics like COVID-19 are an external threat to their population and ensuring food security is a legitimate essential security interest in this context.

Second, can we consider a pandemic like COVID-19 to be an emergency in international relations? Some States such as the United States or Russia have

mentioned pandemics in their National Security Strategy as threats to their national security in the public health sphere. Moreover, there are already examples in which the UN Security Council has recognized that an infectious disease such as Ebola ‘constitutes a threat to international peace and security’. Therefore, one could reasonably claim that COVID-19 is not just a national emergency, but an emergency in international relations.

Lastly, when raising a security exception, WTO Members should (1) define ‘essential security interests’ in good faith and (2) adopt measures for the protection of essential security interests in good faith.

Good faith obligation, inter alia, requires a WTO member to show that its measures ‘are not implausible as measures protective of these interests’. For instance, WTO Members should show that their trade restrictions are effective in ensuring food security or, seen from another side, that such prohibitions do not contribute to exacerbating the negative effects on food security – i.e. there are no price spikes, etc. This element seems to be the hardest one to prove for a State, given the interconnection of global supply chains.

To sum up, WTO Members might be able to justify their food export prohibitions under a national security exception if they comply with the above requirements. That said, WTO Members should not forget that autarky has often proved disruptive: in the Soviet Union, as Leonid Brezhnev acknowledged in 1981, food distribution and supply was one of the greatest economic and political problems. States should learn the lessons from history and collaborate to find a global solution to COVID -19 instead of restricting trade. As we may hope, the present pandemic is a ‘global crisis, not a crisis of globalization’.


The long version of this blog post si expected to be published in Global Trade and Customs Journal, Issue 7, Volume 15 (2020).

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