The Spanish Presidency of the EU Council and the team of negotiators from the European Parliament hope to reach an agreement in October on the revision of the rules on agricultural geographical indications. A final trilogue is scheduled for the week of 9 October.
On Wednesday 19 July, European Parliament rapporteur Paolo De Castro (S&D, Italian) informed the other members of the Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture of the results of the 18 July trilogue on geographical indications.
Thanks to the work carried out over the last few weeks, an agreement has been reached on “43 of the 89 articles in the European Commission’s proposal”, said Mr De Castro.
Six blocks of conflicting issues have been identified: the protection of GIs used as ingredients, the role of producer groups, online protection, sustainability criteria, the tasks assigned to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the rules on wine.
“We were able to discuss the first four”, said the European Parliament rapporteur. He noted the openness of the Spanish Presidency to the Parliament’s requests on ingredients, online protection and sustainability criteria (see EUROPE 13222/18).
Mr De Castro regretted that a compromise “still seems a long way off” on the role of producer groups, because in his view the Council wants to grant unrecognised producer groups set up in Member States “that have not activated any recognition mechanism the same rights as those provided for consortia that have followed the full recognition procedure in countries such as France, Spain, Portugal and Italy”.
It will also be necessary to overcome the differences over the ‘wine package’ (exclusion of certain chapters of ‘wine GIs’ from the scope of the GI regulation). The final point for discussion is the role of the EUIPO in relation to agricultural GIs. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)