Geographical Indications’ contribution to smart territorial development and sustainability. Insights for GIs producers, policy makers, consumers and local communities.

Project Information

GI SMART

Grant agreement ID: 101136364

DOI

10.3030/101136364

EC signature date 27 May 2024

Start date 1 June 2024

End date 31 May 2028

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 2 542 594,20

Coordinated by

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GI SMART (Geographical Indications’ contribution to smart territorial development and sustainability. Insights for GIs producers, policy makers, consumers and local communities.)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Over the last decades, the development of the legal protection of EU Geographical Indications (GIs) has been at the cutting edge of the international EU trade policy in the global agricultural and food markets, and is considered as a trade success, representing an estimated total sales value of € 75 billion in 2017, and 15% of EU food and drink exports, (AND 2021). The benefits of GIs development for society at large across EU countries includes maintaining skilled jobs and economics activities in rural areas, encouraging the production of quality products, preserving biodiversity, fostering the intergenerational transmission of local know-how and traditional methods, while stimulating innovative activities and education, maintaining rural landscapes, making GIs an instrument of territorial development.
Considered as part of the EU food heritage, it has also generated a global growth in demand and consumer preference for European quality by providing additional information on the characteristics and benefits of GIs products, especially on the origin of the products (and its cultural heritage), the quality (through a set of specifications), as well as its authenticity (no imitation) and its safety (through specifications and controls). By doing so, the quality designations defined by GIs regulations (PDO - Protected Denomination of Origin - and PGI - Protected Geographical Indications) have provided a number of benefits by maintaining food diversity and offering a wider choice to consumers.
The recent EU regulation 2024/1143 on the sustainability of GIs aims at strengthening geographical indications, preserving high quality products and reinforcing their protection through several measuring, including a more focused approach to sustainability through its three dimensions : social, environmental and economic, as well as their governance by empowering producer’s groups and collective action in managing, enforcing their rights and developing their GIs, especially by facilitating access to anti-counterfeiting authorities and customs in all Member States. However, the development of more sustainable GI food systems in Europe still faces a number of challenges and contradictory trends in terms of environmental effects and sustainability requirements in the context of climate change and increasing consumer and citizen demand for more sustainable and healthier diets and nutrition.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The objective of the GISMART project is to address these sustainability challenges faced by GIs food systems across EU countries and strengthening their contribution to a smart territorial development by providing : i) a better understanding of the contribution of GIs schemes to sustainability and smart territorial development; ii) improving the sustainability practices of GIs schemes implemented by producers and their perception by consumers, local communities and society at large, iii) providing better and smart policy design and implementation of GIs policy to foster their delivery of sustainable agriculture and fishery, healthy and sustainable diets and sustainable food systems.
In order to reach this goal, the research activities conducted within GI SMART started with a sound state of the art on the sustainability of GIs agrifood systems and their new challenges covering the four dimensions of GIs sustainability (environmental, social, economic, governance), and additional criteria such as the preservation of natural resources and biodiversity, animal welfare, conservation of cultural heritage and landscape management, and their contribution to healthier and sustainable diets for EU consumers. This state of the art served to define the methodologies and pilots to be applied for data collection across the 4 Research Focuses (RF): RF#1 - Assessing the sustainability of all EU GIs, through existing EU and national data sets and surveys; RF#2 – Mapping practices and valorise GIs sustainable outcomes, through selected case studies ; RF#3 - Exploring and benchmarking policies for GIs through desk research, expert survey and policy panels; RF#4 - Improving consumer insights to realize sustainable GIs, through consumer surveys, world café and choice experiments.
The transversal approach adopted within GISMART has allowed to better identify the current knowledge gaps and existing conceptual blind spots in the academic literature, for proposing a renewed analytical approach to address the new sustainability challenges faced by GIs agrifood systems across EU countries. The setting of nine EU and national Multi-Actor Platform (MAP) across EU countries has also stimulated fruitful dialogue, as part of the GISMART project, with GIs stakeholders and policy makers on GIs future challenges across EU countries.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The first results have highlighted the importance of adopting a more integrated, dynamic and participatory approach to sustainability, at different scales from the farm level to collective and territorial scales, and including both environmental sustainability, but also their economic and social dimensions. The analysis identified a number of trade-offs at stake in assessing GIs sustainability, as well as some bottlenecks related to a lack of consumer awareness of GIs logos, potential sources of imbalance and unfair competition in the food supply chain, the lack of a clear definition of GI producer groups at EU level, leading to missed opportunities in terms of managing supply, pooling resources, strengthening members' bargaining position and cooperation, and applying for rural development funds. However, well-managed GIs producer groups constitute an innovative governance mechanism for adding value to EU agrifood production, and thus for improving the competitiveness of the sector and SMEs and up-taking of good practices for more sustainable GIs.