In her Opinion, delivered on Thursday 17 March in case C-159/20, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU,) Tamara Ćapeta, considered that Denmark is in breach of the 2012 Agricultural Products Market Regulation (1151/2012) by exporting cheese produced in Denmark and bearing the designation ‘Feta’ out of the EU.
The Commission, supported by Greece and Cyprus, referred the matter to the CJEU in 2020. It accused Denmark of not respecting the rules on protected designations of origin (PDO). It also criticised it for breaching the principle of sincere cooperation between Member States and “weakening the EU’s position in international negotiations to ensure the protection of EU quality systems”.
In its defence, the Kingdom of Denmark stated that Regulation 1151/2012 only applied to the internal market and not to products exported outside the EU.
The Advocate General of the Court, Tamara Ćapeta, considers, however, that the protection of intellectual property rights, which ensures fair competition for producers of PDO products, is also valid for exported products. According to her, the EU has an arsenal of actions that form “a credible and coherent policy” to protect the quality of products such as those with a PDO. It is therefore clear to her that EU legislators also want to protect products intended for export.
Ms Ćapeta therefore proposes that the Court declare that Denmark “has failed to fulfil its obligations [...] by not preventing or stopping the use of the name ‘Feta’ on cheese produced in Denmark but intended for export to third countries”.
However, the Advocate General considers that Denmark has not failed to comply with the principle of sincere cooperation between the Member States, insofar as a resolution of this dispute is possible through the courts.
“In liberal democracies, the meaning of the law has to be open for contestation, and the party whose understanding is not upheld by the court cannot be deemed disloyal to the system of the law only for being ‘wrong’”.
See the opinion of the Advocate General: https://aeur.eu/f/t9 (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)