The European Parliament Has Adopted An Agreement With China On The Protection Of Product Names

The European Parliament Has Adopted An Agreement With China On The Protection Of Product Names

In Brussels, the European Parliament (EP) supported an agreement between the EU and China on protecting the names of 200 European and Chinese food specialties from counterfeiting. 645 MEPs voted in favor of the EU-China agreement signed in September, 22 were against and 18 abstained. The agreement ensures that one hundred European products with a geographical indication - such as Feta cheese, Münchener Bier, Polska Wódka or Queso Manchego - will be legally protected in China against counterfeiting and misuse of the product name. In return, one hundred Chinese products will benefit from the same form of protection in the EU's single market. MEPs have agreed to extend the agreement to another 175 European and Chinese products within four years. According to MEPs, this is an "important confidence-building process" during the ongoing negotiations between the EU and China on a bilateral investment agreement. However, lawmakers also expressed concern about market-distorting practices used by Chinese state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfers by the Chinese government, and other unfair trade practices. In 2019, China was the third largest importer of products with a protected geographical indication from the EU, which also covered wines, spirits and agri-food products. However, between 2018 and 2019, up to 80 percent of counterfeit and pirated goods seized in the EU came from China, causing losses of around € 60 billion to European manufacturers and suppliers. According to the EP's rapporteur for this area, Romanian MEP Iulio Winkler, this is the EU's first-ever economic and trade agreement with China. "The agreement promises to support European agri-food exports to China, which already reached € 14.5 billion in 2019. It is also a good measure of China's ambition to protect intellectual property rights more strongly," Winkler said in a media report. The European Parliament also took this opportunity to express its deep concern at the alleged exploitation and detention of Uyghurs in factories in China. Following the assent of the European Parliament, the Council of the EU (the ministers of the member states) must also approve this agreement so that it can enter into force as early as 2021.