WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2016 - The European Union’s insistence
that geographical indications (GIs) be a part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) is
looking to be more of a roadblock than ever before, according to documents and
industry officials.
U.S. negotiators have never showed any signs of giving in to
EU demands on GI protections for food names like Asiago cheese or Black Forest
ham, but the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, is promising its
28 member states that its negotiators will not relent.
A “declaration” issued by the EC to its member states, a
copy of which was viewed by Agri-Pulse,
assures European government leaders that negotiators are “committed to achieving the best possible
level of protection of … geographical
indications under ongoing or future
negotiations of trade agreements in light of the market situation in each
trading partner and the interests of the Member States.”
The document was drawn up to
address the recently negotiated Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) pact between the EU and Canada, but David Salmonsen, a senior director for
congressional relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said it’s also a clear sign that the Commission is promising
to make the protection of GIs an issue in all of its bilateral agreements.
The U.S. dairy
sector is irate that Canada agreed to European demands on GIs because of the
damage it would do to U.S. exports of protected cheeses like Asiago to Canadian
buyers. U.S. exporters are already counting up the losses in sales to countries
like South Korea and Costa Rica, both of which agreed to European GI
restrictions.
The ramifications
for the U.S. as it negotiates T-TIP are very clear, said Jaime Castaneda, senior
vice president for trade policy for the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
“The European Commission is clearly indicating to their
member states that this unfortunate surrendering by Canada of its own
intellectual property rights and prior commitments to its trading partners are
not a precedent and the EU will ask for more moving forward,” Castaneda told Agri-Pulse.
Although not formally under negotiation, the U.S. has agreed
to discuss the Europeans’ GI demands. Those talks took up more than a day
during the last round of T-TIP talks in New York when both sides met earlier
this month.
The more GI protections are discussed, the more nervous the
U.S. farming and food sectors get. That fear prompted the Consortium for Common
Food Names – a group sponsored by organizations like the National Milk
Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council – to commission a study
on what would happen if the EU demands were ever agreed to.
The conclusions of the report are
dire. Researchers predicted that if the U.S. dairy sector were unable to use
names like Asiago, feta and Parmesan, there would be a 21 percent reduction in
U.S. cheese consumption over 10 years, costing the dairy industry about $5.2
billion in lost sales. One exemption that EU negotiators agreed to in CETA was
to allow a grandfather clause for Canadian producers of feta cheese. Producers
already making feta will be able to continue to do so under the trade pact.
But don’t expect the Europeans to agree to those kind of
exemptions in the future. The “declaration” document recognizes complaints from
member state Greece over the exemption and specifically promises that the
exemption “does not create a precedent for ongoing or future negotiations.”
The EU document also pledges that Canada will not be allowed
to disregard the GI restrictions: “The Commission confirms its intention, in
view of the CETA agreement, to ensure strict implementation of the protection
of geographical indications foreseen in this Agreement, inter alia, of its
provisions on administrative enforcement, and regarding entities entitled to
use exceptions …”
Food names in the U.S. aren’t the only thing under fire from
EU negotiators, according to Tom LaFaille, vice president and international
trade counsel for the U.S.-based Wine Institute.
The U.S. and EU signed a pact
in 2006 that included agreements on a long list of grape and wine
names that would be restricted to U.S. producers, but La Faille told Agri-Pulse that the Europeans have been
trying to expand the protections under T-TIP.
LaFaille said EU negotiators are now trying to protect
common names that are ubiquitous on U.S. wine labels, such as chateau,
burgundy, prosecco and even Chablis.
“We had negotiations in 2006 and they need to stick to that
agreement,” LaFaille said. “We’re talking about millions of dollars in brands
that have been developed in the U.S.” For now, LaFaille said, U.S. negotiators
have refused to budge on the new wine label demands by the Europeans during
T-TIP negotiations.
But the Europeans are facing a potentially major setback
with CETA before T-TIP negotiations end. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is still
planning to arrive in Brussels on Thursday to sign CETA, but Belgium announced
Monday that the country was not ready to agree to it because of opposition in
the country’s region of Wallonia, according to press
reports from Europe.
Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, is quoted by
The Guardian as saying, “We encourage all parties to find a solution. There’s
yet time.”
#30
For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
