The interest for protecting specialty agriculture products

By Laura Nobel

The EU is encouraging third countries (those not part of the EU) to adopt and develop systems of protection for their specialty and regional products through national systems necessary to obtain the European labelling system for protection. What is this labelling system and why is it interesting for producers in third countries?

The European Union (EU) has a quality policy for the protection of agriculture products of geographical origin. The aim of the quality policies is to protect and enhance the food production through regulations of quality standards, product conditions and legal protection through Intellectual Property Rights. The EU-labels are a feature of the policies that aims for the protection of specialty products and are divided into three labels:

• Protected Geographical Indication (PGI);
• Protected Designation of Origin (PDO);
• Traditional Specialities Guaranteed (TSG).

The labels guarantee a product to be unique or special enough to be under protection of the European Union laws. The labels have specific requirements to guarantee production with recognized work methods, thereby increasing the quality of the product. Companies can benefit from these labels for several reasons. Firstly, the labels are a form of protection of Intellectual Property Rights. This means the product is registered and products without the label cannot be falsely market. Secondly, it can contribute to the rise of consumer’s trust. Thirdly, the labels can increase competitiveness on local and international markets with mandatory EU-standards. Lastly, the labels could contribute to rural development policies.

The many perks of a label does not signify the interests of many countries and producers. On the contrary, there are only a few countries that really delve into the wonders of the labels. There are 1,307 products registered in the DOOR-database that have received an EU-label as of November 2015. DOOR-database is a system operated by the European Commission. It shows all registered labelled products and those that are currently applying or have been declined in the past. All information about the product is available through this database.

Italy is on the top with 277 products registered in the database as of November 2015, closely followed by France with 224 products. This is a stark contrast with other EU countries such as Bulgaria, Denmark and Finland with only 5 or 6 products.

The interest for the EU to promote labels for intellectual property rights in third countries has multiple reasons. The national system named Geographical Indication (GI) is formed by the WIPO and counts as encouragement for protection of national agricultural specialties. The government of that country is responsible for the implementation of the system and offers only national protection of that product. National protection is important, but for companies that wish to export their goods, international protection is even more important. For bilateral trades within the EU, the EU labelling system is very interesting for third countries.

For third countries applying for EU membership it is a form of European integration. Serbia, for example, has implemented the GI regulation since April 1995 under the Law of Geographical Indications. It was changed on March 23, 2010 to harmonize it with the European labelling system. Once Serbia gains membership to the EU, they have the rights to give EU labels to their nationally protected GI products. This is easier than to have producers file for registration on their own through the European Commission. There are two products in Serbia that are filing for an EU label through the European Commission, both with an interest to export to the EU.

The EU labelling system consists of 3 labels. It is only obtainable for third countries if they have implemented a national Geographical indication system, therefore the EU promotes this system.