Food Regulations and Enforcement in Italy

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Abstract

Starting from 2016, Italy has adopted a series of decrees providing the mandatory labelling of the origin of raw materials (milk on all dairy products, wheat and semolina on pasta, rice, tomato on its preserves), and also the production and/or packaging site on all ‘Made (or Packaged) in Italy’ food products. The legitimacy of such national technical standards is conditioned - under the EU rules - to their prior notification to the European Commission, with a standstill period to follow, awaiting comments from Member States and the Bruxelles institution as well. Nonetheless, the previous Italian government led by Mr. Paolo Gentiloni violated said rules, thus making the aforementioned ineffective, as clarified by consolidated European jurisprudence. In this paper, the author describes the ‘origin decrees’ and their enforcement in Italy, by also highlighting the breach of European law and the current situation of uncertainty which is still faced by Italian operators all along the food supply chain, under the deplorable inertia of the European Commission, whose intervention has been repeatedly sought to no avail.

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