Brussels, 17/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European trade ministers, meeting on 14 June for the Foreign Affairs Council, formally decided to give the European Commission a mandate to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States (see other article). France will be paying close attention to the tariff plank regarding agricultural products during the negotiations, to ensure that the final agreement does not harm EU farmers.
“If respect for the cultural exception is a vital point on which France has got its way, Stephane Le Foll and Nicole Bricq have had guarantees for our agricultural and food red lines included in the negotiation mandate”, a press release by the French Ministry of Agriculture (our translation).
As regards “collective preferences” (GMO, growth promoters, chemical decontamination of meat and animal cloning), France has succeeded in safeguarding the European acquis and prevented national laws from being challenged.
As regards protected geographical indications, France supported high levels of standards to ensure that the agreement leads to effective protection and deals with cases of usurpation, particularly in the field of wines and spirits.
The French Minister for Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, also pledged that he would “remain vigilant throughout the negotiations on the tariff plank for agricultural products, to ensure that many European sectors are not endangered due, amongst other things, to major differences in production conditions on either side of the Atlantic”.
At the opening of Vinexpo on Sunday 16 June, Le Foll also acknowledged that the opening of trade negotiations between the European Union and the United States raised “a number of questions”. “As regards food and agriculture, there are dimensions which go beyond the commercial and economic issue alone”, he said. “Beyond the frequently raised question of GMOs, there are real questions on the recognition of geographical identifiers and everything related to CDOs (controlled designation of origin) and PDIs (protected designation of origin). In this debate, we have to be extremely vigilant and, on the Commission's mandate, we had to lay down rules and red lines not to be cfrossed in order to avoid getting round some of the designations”, Le Foll stressed. He pointed out that the United States had “always been tempted to claim or to use a number of designations for commercial purposes”, “the mandate which was conferred upon the Commission [including] these dimensions”.
The European Federation of Origin Wines (EFOW) has welcomed the inclusion of geographical indications (GIs) in the scope of the negotiations and hopes that this step will lead to real progress in the protection of appellation wines on the American market. The organisation points out that the US does not protect all European wines with GIs. On the American market, which is the largest export market for European wines, representing around one third of extra-EU exports, many GI wines are considered as generic or “semi-generic”. This lack of protection allows the Americans to use GI names such as Chianti, Port, Champagne, Sherry and Tokay on their wines in the US and to free-ride on the fame and reputation of European wines. A free-trade agreement with the United States “therefore represents a real opportunity to move forward with this thorny issue and reach an agreement which puts an end to the usurpation of GI wines”, says EFOW.
The President of EFOW, Riccardo Ricci-Curbastro, welcomes the mandate adopted by the Council which recognises the need for better protection for European GIs in the United States. He adds: “This is even more relevant given that the US market represents a real challenge for the European wine sector. Today a growing number of our names are usurped and it is a great loss from an economic standpoint, but also in terms of reputation and consumer confidence in our wines”. (LC/transl.fl)