Supermarkets and private standards of sustainability:the responsibility to protect without protectionism

The current international economic scenario is characterized by the presence of an increasing number of multinational enterprises, the formation of global value chains and the creation of transnational regulatory networks. The aim of this book is to analyze to which extent private standards of sustainability imposed by supermarkets protect common values as the human life or health instead of constituting disguised restrictions to trade. The analysis and the case studies disclosed that the essence of the aforementioned standards can be determined through the limited scope of WTO treaties that regulate non-tariff barriers to trade and the search of coherence between supermarkets sustainability policies and OECD rules.