On Thursday, 9 March, 200 EU wine appellations (in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, etc.) wrote MEPs to inform them that, in their opinion, the proposed reform of the rules on geographical indications (GIs) represented “a threat to the success of the policy on wine with a designation of origin”.
On one hand, these appellations oppose the European Commission’s proposal to “outsource the examination of our product specifications to an EU agency”, namely the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).
The product specifications for [their] wines with a designation of origin “go far beyond protecting a name and include rules on production, packaging, labelling, and sustainability in which the EUIPO has no expertise”.
They think that only the European Commission and Member States should be responsible—within the framework for enhanced subsidiarity—for examining applications for registration, amendments, oppositions, and cancellations. According to these appellations, the EUIPO could, at most, play an important role by managing the Union register as well as a domain name information and alert system (see EUROPE 13125/15).
On the other hand, these appellations of origin do not support the proposal to “separate” a section of the rules on wines with GIs from the rules set out in the Common Market Organisation (CMO) Regulation.
Link to the letter (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/5pv (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)