Western Daily Press

‘Cornish pasties’ could lose EU protected status

- OLIVIER VERGNAULT news@westerndai­lypress.co.uk

CORNISH pasties could soon be made in France and still be called ‘Cornish’ after British Brexit negotiator­s failed to secure the same guarantees for British products in the EU, it has been claimed.

Lord Paul Tyler fears the Brexit negotiatio­ns are being handled so badly on the British side that while Britain will keep protection for delicacies like Champagne and Parma ham come January 1 next year, the same does not go for some of the British produce with Geographic­al Indication­s (GI) status.

GIs are a form of intellectu­al property right that protects the names of qualifying food or drink products from a certain area, preventing other producers from using them.

There are 3,347 EU GIs which will now be protected in the UK after the Brexit transition period under the agreement it will prevent, for example, UK vineyards calling their white sparking wine Champagne.

When the UK was a fully-fledged member of the EU, some 83 British products including Cornish pasties,

Cornish clotted cream, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Yorkshire forced rhubarb, Shetland wool, Welsh lamb and traditiona­l Cumberland sausage and Scotch whisky received the mutual protection.

That meant that someone in Greece or Germany could not make pasties and call them Cornish.

Lord Tyler, the former Lib Dem MP for Bodmin and North Cornwall, fears that protection could now disappear.

He said: “If this is not sorted out by the end of June, then come January 2021 when the transition period ends this will be it. There will be nothing that can be done. It will then be possible for pasties to be produced in Germany, France or Spain and called Cornish when they are not.”

According to a report by The Telegraph, British officials argue that the Withdrawal Agreement calls for the current arrangemen­t for existing GIs to be superseded by a free trade agreement.

That means that while EU product protection is now enshrined in an internatio­nal legally binding treaty, British products will only be protected under EU law if they remain on the EU’s register of Geographic­al Indication­s.

The British Government plans to introduce a new UK GI system from January 1 next year with producers from the EU and the UK being able to apply directly to that scheme, which would begin at the end of the transition period.

David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, told a parliament scrutiny committee last week: “The problem with the Withdrawal Agreement, which obviously we are committed to, is that it requires us to protect EU GIs in this country in perpetuity but does not place any such obligation on the EU to protect ours.”

The former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Associatio­n added: “We would like to have something that is more balanced and make sure that our GIs are properly protected.”

Lord Tyler said: “If the Daily Telegraph report is correct then this is yet another broken Brexit promise. The irony of it all is that if it happened we would still use the EU GI status in the UK which means someone could not make pasties in Yorkshire and call them Cornish but you could make them anywhere in the world and call them Cornish. It’s loony.”

The total GI sales value of UK protected products was worth about £7 billion in 2017, according to European Commission analysis published in April. Cornish pasties are worth £65m to the Duchy’s economy.

As reported by The Telegraph, the EU Michel Barnier told German radio last week that “there should be more realism in London in the near future if they want an orderly agreement to exit the Single Market and Customs Union”.

He said: “It is difficult for them to accept the consequenc­es of Brexit. The United Kingdom will not dictate to us the terms of access to our market for British goods, services, data or for workers and businesses. We remain sovereign.”

Defra has been invited to comment.

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