Ever since participating on the Spring 2015 Global Study Trip to Serbia and Croatia, I have been fascinated with one of the themes explored on the trip: namely, EU accession and the implications of membership for candidate countries (Serbia remains a candidate country whereas Croatia became an EU member state in 2013).
For our midterm project, George Ragheb and I are exploring this further as it relates to the emerging wine region of Croatia, but in researching such, we came across an interesting controversy that provides some perspective on a potential "cost" to EU membership borne by winemakers.
Upon joining the EU in 2013, Croatia came under pressure from those enforcing the EU's appellation rules given the similarity in nomenclature of its Prošek dessert wine with Italy's famed Prosecco. Ultimately, the Croatian wine industry won the battle against EU regulators and Italian wine industry consortia. The apparent justification for this outcome (and the precedent set) was that mere similarity in nomenclature may not necessarily constitute infringement, but that there must also be some similarity in substance and market segment (which was not the case for these two wines).
Source:
Wall Street Journal Europe: http://www.pressreader.com/belgium/the-wall-street-journal-europe/20130808/281517928754335/TextView
Very interesting precedent indeed.
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