The EU free trade agreements have become the single most influential force shaping the Geographical Indication landscape today. While their critics may see GIs as an unwelcome ‘Trojan horse’ to be let in in exchange for access to the European market, this legal figure has the potential of becoming greatly [...]
The EU free trade agreements have become the single most influential force shaping the Geographical Indication landscape today. While their critics may see GIs as an unwelcome ‘Trojan horse’ to be let in in exchange for access to the European market, this legal figure has the potential of becoming greatly beneficial for developing countries.
It looks in particular at Costa Rica before and after the signature of the EU–Central American Association Agreement of 2012. We examine the practicalities of its implementation on the ground and its impact on the local industry of cheese ‘generics’. It also explores its potential effect on the coffee industry and assess how a developing country of modest size like Costa Rica can embrace this foreign legal transplant and use it to its advantage.
In recent years, the European Union (EU) GI systems for agricultural products, foodstuffs, wines and spirit drinks have become increasingly popular: on 27 October 2020, the eAmbrosia database totalled no less than 3300 designations of origin or geographical indications registered under four different regulations and 197 pending applications. The legal framework secures producers’ rights [...]
In recent years, the European Union (EU) GI systems for agricultural products, foodstuffs, wines and spirit drinks have become increasingly popular: on 27 October 2020, the eAmbrosia database totalled no less than 3300 designations of origin or geographical indications registered under four different regulations and 197 pending applications.
The legal framework secures producers’ rights and their products’ value-added. It affords broad protection to PDOs/PGIs registered at EU level, not only against direct or indirect uses but also against evocations, with the aim of combatting misleading and deceptive practices and preventing traders from taking unfair advantage of the protected names’ reputation. This article examines the jurisprudence of the EU’s General Court and Court of Justice related to the protection of registered designations against evocation, and highlights the open issues that remain to be addressed to clarify the legal arsenal and tighten the protection scheme.
This paper aims to examine the implications of the efforts to promote a quality-oriented economy that incorporates a vision of environmental sustainability and equitable social development. The analysis builds on a case study of food procurement in Brazil, which intended to improve the quality of food used in public schools [...]
This paper aims to examine the implications of the efforts to promote a quality-oriented economy that incorporates a vision of environmental sustainability and equitable social development.
The analysis builds on a case study of food procurement in Brazil, which intended to improve the quality of food used in public schools. The case study follows ways that the promotion of quality food has localised the procurement operation, connecting smallholders to citizen-consumers.
The efforts to promote quality food procurement worked to shape reflexive governance in a decentralised political environment and create an institutional device based on cooperative civic participation and state engagement. However, this process highlighted socioeconomic inequality within the country due to uneven local capacities to connect good-quality services to the citizens’ everyday places. The study identifies the following paths to tackle this unevenness: improvement of place-based infrastructure; promotion of trans-local cooperation; and building on the existing informal institutional arrangements.
This study contributes to the call of many scholars to investigate the relationship between group heterogeneity and cooperation patterns in GI consortia. In particular, we focus on the solution of the problems of quality standardization derived by an increasing heterogeneity and free-riding behaviour among members. A framework adapted from Lee [...]
This study contributes to the call of many scholars to investigate the relationship between group heterogeneity and cooperation patterns in GI consortia. In particular, we focus on the solution of the problems of quality standardization derived by an increasing heterogeneity and free-riding behaviour among members. A framework adapted from Lee and Wall (2012) and Forster and Metcalfe (2012) is employed to identify the resources (inputs), conditions (facilitators) and innovation process (outputs) required for the formation of a new internal institution in the Consortium, as a tool for safeguarding “higher quality” within the common (outcome). This work uses a case-study approach and analyses the Parmigiano Reggiano (PR) Consortium in Italy. Specifically, we applied a ground-theory approach and conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders at different levels (consortium, politicians, large-sized dairy farms, small-sized dairy farms, NGOs, members of PR route, PR museum) in the time frame of May 2012-August 2013. The governance patterns highlighted in this study give evidence of a high internal dynamism within GI Consortia. Our study confirms how governance strategies to reduce free riding in GI schemes and to re-establish cooperation can be implemented even through the creation of formal endogenous or exogenous institutions. However, cooperation can stem among homogenous sub-groups as a resilience strategy showing how a formal institutionalization of sub-consortia within a well established GI common may be successful.
