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Extra vir­gin olive oil from Istria has been included in the Euro­pean Union’s Reg­is­ter of Pro­tected Des­ig­na­tions of Ori­gin (PDO) and Pro­tected Geo­graph­i­cal Indi­ca­tions (PGI) as a prod­uct of PDO.

The appel­la­tion ​“Istra” (the Croa­t­ian and Sloven­ian name for Istria) is now a reg­is­tered PDO for olive oil pro­duced in Istria, a penin­sula located in the north Adri­atic Sea that is shared by both Croa­tia and Slove­nia.

While 90 per­cent of Istria is located in Croa­tia, the north­west­ern part of the penin­sula belongs to Slove­nia.

The new appel­la­tion was announced in a reg­u­la­tion pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 27, 2019 in the Offi­cial Jour­nal of the Euro­pean Union.

After receiv­ing national Pro­tected Des­ig­na­tion of Ori­gin sta­tus in 2015, the appli­ca­tion for PDO recog­ni­tion at the EU level for Istrian olive oil was first sub­mit­ted by Croa­tia to the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in July 2015.

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the appli­ca­tion in March 2016 and in accor­dance with pro­ce­dures, which include a three-month objec­tion period, a notice of oppo­si­tion was filed by Slove­nia on June 22, 2016.

The objec­tion argued that the pro­posed appel­la­tion ​“Istarsko ekstra dje­vičan­sko masli­novo ulje” (Istrian extra vir­gin olive oil) may cause con­fu­sion as Sloven­ian olive oil from Istria already had PDO sta­tus in the EU’s reg­is­ter under the name ​“Ekstra deviško oljčno olje Slovenske Istre” (extra vir­gin olive oil from Sloven­ian Istria) since 2007.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion accepted the objec­tion as admis­si­ble and in Octo­ber 2016 asked the author­i­ties of the two neigh­bor­ing coun­tries to reach an agree­ment on the issue.

Fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions, an agree­ment was com­mu­ni­cated to the Com­mis­sion in May 2017 and a new joint appli­ca­tion was filed jointly by both coun­tries.

Sev­eral amend­ments were agreed on, the most impor­tant being that the pro­posed appel­la­tion be changed to ​“Istra,” and the pro­duc­tion area enlarged to include the entire penin­sula.

Fol­low­ing exam­i­na­tion of the new joint appli­ca­tion, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion accepted the appli­ca­tion for reg­is­tra­tion on the basis that con­di­tions were ful­filled and that the appel­la­tion ​“Istra” be entered in the reg­is­ter of EU prod­ucts with PDO.

The reg­u­la­tion pub­lished in the Offi­cial Jour­nal declares that: ​“The exten­sion of the geo­graph­i­cal area to Sloven­ian Istria is jus­ti­fied since Sloven­ian Istria pro­duces olive oil shar­ing the same his­tory, link and qual­i­ties with the Croa­t­ian Istrian olive oil cov­ered by the appli­ca­tion. The use of the name ​‘Istra’ has been exhaus­tively demon­strated in Slove­nia and Croa­tia.”

PDO is the high­est of the three des­ig­na­tions under the EU prod­uct cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, which pro­tects prod­uct names from mis­use and assures con­sumers of their authen­tic­ity.

A prod­uct labelled with a PDO des­ig­na­tion is one that is pro­duced, processed and pre­pared in a spe­cific geo­graph­i­cal area using local knowl­edge and meth­ods.

The other two EU des­ig­na­tions include PGI – for prod­ucts with at least one stage of pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing or prepa­ra­tion tak­ing place in a cer­tain geo­graph­i­cal area – and TSG (Tra­di­tional Spe­cial­ity Guar­an­teed), which des­ig­nates prod­ucts with a ​“tra­di­tional char­ac­ter” in terms of either its com­po­si­tion or pro­duc­tion.

Croa­tia and Slove­nia already share a PDO in the EU’s reg­is­ter for Istrian pro­sciutto, or cured ham, which was reg­is­tered in Octo­ber 2015.

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