J80 - Labor Standards: GeneralReturn

One of the very important features of the dispute settlement mechanism under the WTO is the principle of the cross retaliation. The dispute settlement mechanism is going to be used for any of the areas within the agenda of WTO. Therefore, there is a crucial question of the issues included in the scope of subjects administrated under the World Trade Organization. Several development countries tried to pressure the member states, basically the developing countries to link labor standards with trade and include them under the jurisdiction competences of the WTO. The main aim of this paper is to outline the development of the linkage of the labor standards to the trade and its consequences for the World Trade Organization. We would like to describe the principle of the so called social clause and therefore stress some of the critical issues related to the idea of binding multilateral social standards.