ABSTRACT
Plastic pollution has emerged as one of the defining environmental crises of the twenty-first century, generating transboundary ecological harm that transcends the capacity of fragmented national and international legal regimes to address. This paper examines two interlocking dimensions of contemporary global plastic governance: the European Union's Single-Use Plastics Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/904) as a paradigmatic life-cycle regulatory instrument, and the Brussels Effect as a mechanism of regulatory globalization through which EU norms diffuse across international markets and legal systems. The paper critically analyses the WTO compatibility of the Directive under the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, drawing on landmark dispute settlement jurisprudence including US–Tuna II, US–Clove Cigarettes, EC–Asbestos, and US–Shrimp. It further interrogates the equity and legitimacy dimensions of the Brussels Effect, particularly its disproportionate compliance burden on developing economies, and situates these concerns within the emerging framework of the Global Plastics Treaty. The paper concludes that while the EU Directive represents a significant advance in life-cycle plastic regulation and its extraterritorial influence has catalysed global norm convergence, durable and equitable plastic governance ultimately requires a legally binding multilateral instrument that integrates trade and environmental objectives with differentiated obligations for developing states.
Keywords: Single-Use Plastics Directive, Brussels Effect, WTO/TBT Agreement, Plastic Governance, Life-Cycle Regulation, Global Plastics Treaty, Trade and Environment
I. INTRODUCTION
The global plastic crisis is a multidimensional environmental, public health, and governance challenge. In the last 70 years, world-wide production of plastic has increased from about 2 million metric tons to more than 400 million metric tons per year, with only a small portion of plastics being recycled, resulting in the build-up of plastics in both land and ocean ecosystems. 1 Plastics will remain in the environment for many years, as they are subject to fragmentation into microplastics which enter both food chains and human tissues, indicating that plastic pollution is not only the result of ineffective waste management systems, but also a result of global patterns of production and consumption that are not sustainable.
Against this backdrop, the European Union enacted Directive (EU) 2019/904 on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment, commonly known as the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD). 2 The implementation of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) marked an important change in EU policy for environmental sustainability within a circular economy, i.e. moving from a reactive approach to managing waste by addressing it only after it has been created to an approach that includes all phases of the lifecycle from design, production and use to final disposal, prioritizing prevention through intervention at all points along the lifecycle. By targeting the ten single-use plastic product categories most frequently found in marine litter, 3 the Directive deploys a combination of market prohibitions, consumption reduction targets, extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes, product design requirements, and mandatory labelling.
This paper examines three three connected topics. The first, is SUPD similar to EU’s legal duties to WTO, especially regarding TBT Agreement & GATT 1994? Second, how does the Brussels Effect work to promote global harmony in plastic use, and what fairness issues occur? Third, what can we learn from this paper about developing a global agreement on the use of plastics that is both fair and effective? The author develops an answer through a legal investigation of WTO cases, a critical review of Brussels Effect and a normative analysis of what is needed to create legally coherent multilateral agreements.
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