CASCO and the World Trade Organization

The importance of the International Standards and Guides on conformity assessment developed by ISO/CASCO to facilitating fair and free international trade is increasingly recognized by the World Trade Organisation.

Technical barriers to trade

Formerly, only tariffs were in principle recognized as restrictions to export/import and international trading. However, with the globalization of economies, the days when nations could afford to indulge in bilateral tariff-cutting negotiations have largely gone. Attention has shifted to so-called technical, or non-tariff, barriers to trade.

One of the main difficulties that exporters face is costly multiple testing and/or certification of products. Non-transparent or discriminatory conformity assessment procedures can become effective protectionist tools, or technical barriers to trade.

Achieving transparent, reliable and efficient conformity assessment practices is therefore a key to facilitating trade in goods and services while ensuring balanced, regulated public protection and fair industrial competition.

Through CASCO, ISO has for many years been producing standards, guides and information documents to promote international trade through reliance on globally harmonized conformity assessment procedures.

The TBT Agreement

The World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO/TBT Agreement) was established to ensure that technical regulations and standards, and the procedures for assessing conformity with them, do not create unnecessary obstacles to international trade.

The TBT Agreement promotes the recognition of others' conformity assessment results as a way of reducing barriers to trade. It emphasizes that confidence in the continued reliability of conformity assessment results is a prerequisite to recognition of assessments.

The agreement says that verifiable compliance with International Standards or Guides for the operation of accreditation, testing, inspection and certification bodies is considered as an indication of adequate technical competence. Many of the relevant standards and guides are ISO/IEC publications produced under the auspices of CASCO, the ISO conformity assessment committee.

Recognition

Successive reviews of the TBT Agreement have noted that ISO/IEC publications in general contribute to improving industrial efficiency and facilitating international trade. More specifically, they have recognized that meeting the requirements of the relevant conformity assessment standards, guides and recommendations is a useful way of benchmarking the technical competence and performance of assessment bodies so that credibility and confidence in their results can be obtained.

Using ISO/IEC conformity assessment publications can thus:

• Serve as the basis for recognition of the competence of conformity assessment bodies



• Facilitate the acceptance of conformity assessment results



• Help ensure a harmonized approach to conformity assessment procedures.