Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1 Agriculture - Uniform laws - Protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs - Matters covered by Regulation No 2081/92 - Domestic legislation laying down conditions governing the use of the description `mountain' in relation to agricultural products and foodstuffs - Excluded

(Council Regulation No 2081/92)

2 Free movement of goods - Quantitative restrictions - Measures having equivalent effect - Definition - Prohibition - Scope

(EC Treaty, Art. 30)

3 Free movement of goods - Quantitative restrictions - Measures having equivalent effect - National legislation allowing the description `mountain' to be used only in relation to products prepared on national territory from domestic raw materials - Not permissible - Justification - Protection of industrial and commercial property - None

(EC Treaty, Arts 30 and 36)

Summary

4 Regulation No 2081/92 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs does not preclude application of domestic legislation which lays down conditions governing the use of the description `mountain' in relation to agricultural products and foodstuffs.

The description `mountain' is quite general in character and transcends national frontiers, whereas, according to Article 2 of Regulation No 2081/92, a direct link must exist between the quality or characteristics of the product and its specific geographical origin. It also evokes in the mind of the consumer qualities linked abstractly with highland origin and not with a particular place, region or country, so that such legislation is too remote from the substantive subject-matter of Regulation No 2081/92 for that regulation to preclude its maintenance.

5 The prohibition of all trading rules enacted by Member States which are capable of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, intra-Community trade, laid down in Article 30 of the Treaty, is fully applicable where application of legislation of this kind is in question, even though the facts of the case before the national court are confined to a single Member State.

In such a situation, the application of the national measure may have effects on the free movement of goods between Member States, particularly when the measure in question facilitates the marketing of goods of domestic origin to the detriment of imported goods. In such circumstances, the application of the measure, even if restricted to domestic producers, in itself creates and maintains a difference of treatment between those two categories of goods, hindering, at least potentially, intra-Community trade.

6 Article 30 of the Treaty precludes application of domestic rules which restrict the use of the description `mountain' to products prepared on national territory from domestic raw materials.

Such legislation impedes intra-Community trade, discriminates against goods imported from other Member States and cannot be justified on grounds of the protection of industrial and commercial property provided for by Article 36 of the Treaty, since the description `mountain', whose use it governs, cannot be characterized as an indication of provenance as defined in Community law.