Denmark has failed to fulfil its obligations under the 2012 Agricultural Products Market Regulation (1151/2012) by allowing its producers to continue exporting cheese under the protected designation of origin ‘feta’, the EU Court of Justice ruled on Thursday 14 July in a case involving Cyprus and Greece (Case C-159/20).
The opinion of the Advocate General is thus upheld (see EUROPE 12913/30).
‘Feta’ has been a protected designation at European level since 2002. In a 2005 judgment, the European Union’s judiciary reserved the right to call its iconic sheep’s milk cheese ‘feta’ only to producers based in Greece, rejecting a German-Danish appeal.
However, Denmark has since allowed its cheese producers to continue using the designation when exporting outside the EU. As a result, the European Commission, supported by Greece and Cyprus, has taken the matter to court.
Denmark should have “prevented and stopped such use on its territory”. However, the Court found that Denmark had not breached its obligations of “sincere cooperation” in this case.
According to the Court, the use of a PDO or PGI to designate a product manufactured on the territory of the Union which does not comply with the applicable product specification “impairs in the Union the intellectual property right constituted by that PDO or PGI, even if that product is intended for export to third countries”.
The Court states that the objective of PDOs and PGIs is to help producers of products linked to a geographical area by securing fair returns for the qualities of their products, by ensuring uniform protection of the names as an intellectual property right in the territory of the European Union, and by providing clear information on the value-adding attributes of the product to consumers.
The use of the PDO ‘feta’ to designate products produced in the territory of the Union which do not comply with the specifications of that PDO undermines those objectives, even if those products are intended for export to third countries, the Court of Justice of the EU has ruled.
Under the CJEU rules, Denmark “must comply with the judgment as soon as possible”. If the Commission considers that the Member State has not complied with the judgment, it may bring a further action, this time for pecuniary penalty.
Greece had authorised the EU, in June 2020, to launch a procedure against Denmark for alleged appropriation of the PDO.
Link to the judgment (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/2mz (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)