The European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture has managed to find compromises on all key aspects of the proposed horizontal regulation on geographical indications (GIs) for agricultural products, ahead of a vote on 20 April in the committee.
The rapporteur, Paolo De Castro (S&D, Italian), and the shadow rapporteurs of the other political groups found common ground on the last remaining problematic issue: the referral of the provisions on wine GIs to the regulation on the common market organisation (CMO), as requested by several political groups.
The European Commission proposed bringing together ,in the horizontal regulation, the standards for all agri-food GIs, wines and spirits. However, wine GIs are in the text of the CMO. GIs for spirits are set out in a separate regulation.
The compromise reached on wines and spirits splits the difference by referring certain crucial provisions for this sector to the CMO text in order to preserve its specificity: labelling, general principles of protection, homonyms, relations with brands and sustainability.
As for the administrative procedures of instruction (registration, opposition, amendments and cancellation), wines would be covered by the horizontal regulation as proposed by the Commission.
The EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) would have a limited role in GI matters (development and management of the Community GI register, assistance to producers in third country markets).
With regard to the new chapter on sustainability, the agreement encourages producer groups to introduce new criteria in the terms of reference and to report on progress in this area.
The European Parliament plenary vote on De Castro’s report is scheduled for the 31 May-1 June mini-plenary session in Brussels (see EUROPE 13150/10).
The Swedish Presidency of the EU Council is trying to bring the EU Council to a common position, but the positions on delegating new tasks to the EUIPO are very different.
The objective for the European Parliament is to start negotiations with the EU Council by June with a view to reaching a final agreement under the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council in the second half of 2023.
Speaking at an event organised by the Association of European Regions for Products of Origin (AREPO) on 30 March, De Castro said that the number of (GI) dossiers that will have to be analysed at EU level “will be considerably reduced”. For this reason, a greater involvement of the EUIPO, in particular in the examination phase of changes to the terms of references, “is not necessary”.
However, the EUIPO will be able to “provide important advisory support on technical issues and contribute to the protection, suppression of imitations and promotion of GIs, both in the internal market and in third markets”, De Castro explained. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)