In June the EU and six countries of the Southern African Development Community (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
The agreement contains an annex on GIs (Annex I to Protocol 3), which applies to South Africa and to the EU, but it is open to the other SADC EPA States. It provides provisions on solid GIs protection (including enforcement mechanisms) as well as a non-exhaustive list of GIs to be protected in both parties’ jurisdiction (page 324 @ http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2015/october/tradoc_153915.pdf ). After the ratification of the Agreement, South African GIs such as Karoo meat, Rooibos tea, Paarl (wine) and Stellenbosch (wine) will be protected in the EU.
This summary has been extracted from an “oriGIn Alert”, which is a service reserved exclusively to oriGIn members.
