How the war on terroir was won – Part 2

Last week, in the first half of this article, we noted that through a succession of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) the EU was able to globalise its GI system and policy.

Success in the FTAs – which meant the removal of opposition to GIs around the world – made possible the successful conclusion of a multilateral GI Agreement in the UN agency WIPO – the so-called Geneva Act, in 2018.

Without a wide network of FTAs protecting 44,000 instances of GIs, many belonging to proud third countries, the Geneva Act would have been dead in the water.

As it was, the only resistance to an agreement in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that would have been impossible in the WTO ten years earlier, came from the USA and its  Australian ally.

Even the GI-sceptic former head of the WIPO, the (Australian) Francis Gurrie – saw the writing on the wall: GIs are a development-friendly form of IPR in a way that patents are not. If I want the developing world to embrace IPR we start with GIs, a benevolent Trojan horse…

The second consequence is that it made possible the establishment this year of an EU-wide regime for craft and industrial GIs – Solingen knives, Donegal Tweed, Murano Glass, Limoges porcelain – an aim that had eluded the European Commission for a decade due to northern European Member State opposition.

With the UK out, Germany converted, and the Nordics seeing the success of agri GIs in the FTAs (nothing succeeds like success they say), the way was clear in 2022 for the Commission to do for crafts what it had done so well for food and drink…

John Clarke in Euractiv.