Treatment by Germany of Imports of Sardines
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Panel
GATT B.I.S.D. 53 (October 31, 1952)

- Written by Josh Lee, JD
Facts
Germany (defendant) and Norway (plaintiff) conducted tariff negotiations at Torquay and reached a trade agreement. The negotiations were based on a German Customs Tariff from 1949 that classified different species of sardines in the same family as separate tariff classification codes. Specifically, the sardines mostly imported from Portugal, Clupea pilchardus, were classified separately from the sardines mostly imported from Norway, Clupea harengus and Clupea sprattus. During the negotiations, Norway attempted to obtain an agreement from Germany that its sardine varieties would be classified the same as the variety from Portugal but did not succeed. However, Germany did assure Norway that equal treatment of those items would continue. After the agreement was executed, Germany imposed a higher import duty on the Norwegian sardine imports than the Portuguese variety. Norway challenged this duty as a violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning ()
What to do next…
Here's why 815,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.