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The European Commission has approved the Protected Geographical Indication PGI ​‘Sicilia’ (Sicily) for extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced on the island. The sec­ond ter­ri­to­r­ial geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion (the first is the Toscano PGI) is the result of long nego­ti­a­tions and a pos­i­tive sign after the con­tro­versy that fol­lowed the European vote on Tunisian olive oil
crit­i­cized by Italian farm­ers, Sicilian ones in par­tic­u­lar.

An EU geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion iden­ti­fies ​“the name of a region, a spe­cific place or, in excep­tional cases, a coun­try used to describe an agri­cul­tural or food prod­uct as native of that region, spe­cific place or coun­try, and of which a given qual­ity, rep­u­ta­tion or other char­ac­ter­is­tics can be attrib­uted to that geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin and whose pro­duc­tion and/or pro­cess­ing and/or prepa­ra­tion take place in the defined geo­graph­i­cal area,” as reads art. 2 of the Regulation (EC) no. 510/2006.
See Also: The Best Sicilian Olive Oils for 2016
Such cer­ti­fi­ca­tions (PGI and PDO) by the European Union are intended to pro­mote the devel­op­ment of spe­cific rural areas and pop­u­la­tions which exert activ­i­ties related to agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­ture of agri-food prod­ucts with spe­cial qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics, in order to pro­tect the inter­ests of pro­duc­ers and con­sumers.

The PGI val­i­da­tion allows Sicilian farm­ers to ben­e­fit from the Measure 3 of the Rural Development Programme of Sicily and cov­ers cer­ti­fi­ca­tion costs up to €3,000 per farm. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will also allow orga­ni­za­tions of Sicilian pro­duc­ers to access pro­mo­tion pro­grams in third coun­tries and the mea­sures for the pro­mo­tion of regional sup­ply chains.

Giovanni La Via, chair­man of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament, called the mea­sure ​“a great suc­cess for Sicily and a recog­ni­tion of the work done in recent months which enables us to over­come some tech­ni­cal con­cerns, and that relaunches one of the strate­gic sec­tors of our region, pro­mot­ing our agri-food excel­lence.”

“This is the great vic­tory of a bat­tle in which I have been per­son­ally involved since the begin­ning of my man­date,” added Michela Giuffrida, a mem­ber of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development of the EP. ​“The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a unique olive oil pro­duc­tion of the Sicilian ter­ri­tory is an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­nity for the island farm­ers which can ben­e­fit from the advan­tages of the European qual­ity sys­tem and finally write on the label that their extra vir­gin olive oil comes exclu­sively from olives grown and crushed in Sicily, with supe­rior qual­ity para­me­ters than the con­ven­tional extra vir­gin olive oil.”

The regional agri­cul­ture coun­sel­lor, Antonello Cracolici and the pres­i­dent of the IGP Sicilia Olive Oil Committee, Maurizio Lunetta said in a joint state­ment, ​“Brussels’s recog­ni­tion is a great result for the whole Sicilian olive oil sup­ply chain and for those who believed in this project and invested their time. Now let us focus on qual­ity as well as quan­tity and sup­port Sicilian extra vir­gin olive oil.”

Now that the decree is pub­lished in the EU Official Journal, the other mem­ber states have 15 days to sub­mit com­ments before the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion becomes effec­tive.

• La Repubblica


• Il Sole 24 Ore