The Legal Analysis of Biofuels Subsidies under the WTO Agreements—in Particular the SCM Agreement and the Agriculture Agreement

• Main Authors: Lo, Chin-Lan, 羅錦嵐
• Other Authors: Shih, Wen-Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/43381851421343204083

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 國際經營與貿易研究所 === 97 === Since the Kyoto Protocol was signed by 160 countries and entered into forced on 16 Feburauy 2005, the governments of above countries began encouraging their enery industries to develop biofuels as substitute to reduce green house gases in pursuit of environmental protection and economic development. While the technologies and trading mechanisms of biofuel industries were immature at the preliminary stage, the prevalence of the biofuels will be dependent on government subsidies. Therefore, whether biofuels subsidies shall be subject to the rules of WTO Agreements is still a controversial issue and needs to be discussed and studied. The main purpose of the thesis is to analyze the domestic policies and incentives of those key biofuel-producuing countries such as Germany, United States and Brazil, and find if such subsidizing measures constitute unfair treatments to foreign compeitiors and violate the SCM Agreement or Agriculture Agrmment under the WTO. In order to conduct a comprehensive analysis and come up with feasible suggestions, the thesis will take the four main incentives, the so-called“Market Assurance”, “Price Support”, “Investment Support”and “Tax credit”as facts to conduct legal analysis as well as discuss the applicability of agreements when Peace Clause came to an end and analyze the legality of each incentive from upstream to downstream of the biofuel production process.