WTO yet to form position on Russia’s new champagne law

MOSCOW, Jul 7 (PRIME-TASS).

GENEVA, Jul 7 (PRIME) -- The World Trade Organization (WTO) has not formed a position in a dispute about a new Russian law on alcohol products, and is unaware of any E.U. actions to promote the dispute within the organization, a spokesperson for the WTO told PRIME late on Tuesday.

The Russian government previously adopted amendments to the law on state regulation of alcohol, which allows wine producers to call their sparkling wines champagne only if the wines are produced locally. The importers of champagne must change their labels to sparkling wine. Moet Hennessy first promised to suspend shipments to Russia, but later agreed to change the label, Bloomberg reported.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told PRIME that the authority was assessing whether the new regulation violates the country’s obligation within the WTO, and that the E.U. was ready to take action.

“We have no position (on the issue). We are also unaware about any actions of the E.U. on putting this issue forward through the WTO dispute settlement mechanism,” the WTO spokesperson told PRIME.

A Genevan source told PRIME that the agreement on trade aspects of intellectual property rights defines the WTO norms on protection of geographical indications and provides additional protection to the indications of wines and spirits. A WTO member has to provide legal means to prevent the use of a geographical indication in a wine that was not produced in the region mentioned in the indication, the source said.

At the same time, the issue has been disputed in the WTO for a long time. “The E.U. and a group of other ‘Old World’ members have been insisting on expansion of protection of their geographical indications in the other countries through the WTO norms for many years, while the ‘New World’ members like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Argentina stood against the new protection measures in this sphere,” the source said.

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