Plain packaging is the WHO’s new concept to fight the global tobacco epidemic. Already adopted in Australia, other countries are certain to follow and are already evaluating its introduction. However, plain packaging is not a scarefree and unproblematic as the WHO considers it to be. The idea of dictating to tobacco producers the way they must present their product provokes heavy protest on political and legal levels. This article analyses the compatibility of plain packaging with WTO-law.
investment claims
investment disputes
WTO-law
TRIPS
GATT
SPS
TBT
intellectual property
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
tobacco control
protective measures
public interest
Leonid Shmatenko (Dipl.-iur., Heinrich-Heine-University ofDüsseldorf) is Junior Fellow and Doctoral candidate at the Chairof German and Foreign Public Law, European Law and Public International Law at the Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf. The author would like to thank Mehrdad Payandeh for the very useful feedback on this article.
e-mail: leonid.shmatenko@uni-duesseldorf.de
