Greek Court Rules in Favor of Olive Producers of Messenia

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The Greek Council of State, the coun­try’s supreme admin­is­tra­tive court, has ruled that only pro­duc­ers of Kalamon table olives in the Messenia region in south­west Peloponnese are enti­tled to mar­ket their olives under the ​‘Kalamata’ brand name.

The court repealed the min­is­te­r­ial decree of 2018, which had added the term ​‘Kalamata olives/Elia Kalamatas’ to the Greek national list of plant vari­eties as syn­ony­mous with the Kalamon cul­ti­var.

The decree enabled Greek olive pro­duc­ers of the Kalamon vari­ety based out­side Messenia to pro­mote their olives as ​‘Kalamata Olives,’ gain­ing recog­ni­tion among global con­sumers.

On the other hand, their Messenian coun­ter­parts con­tin­ued to mar­ket their Kalamon olives under the ​‘Kalamata Olives’ brand and retained the added ben­e­fit of the Protected Designation of Origin label, which was attrib­uted to the olives of Messenian ori­gin by the European Union in 1996.

In its deci­sion, the Supreme Court also stated that Greek pro­duc­ers of Kalamon olives out­side of Messenia must use the ​‘Kalamon’ term accom­pa­nied by the place of ori­gin to mar­ket their olives.

The case was under review by the court for more than two years after the appeal of SYMEPOP, the asso­ci­a­tion in sup­port of PDO olive pro­duc­ers of Messenia, against the min­is­te­r­ial decree.

In its appeal, the asso­ci­a­tion argued that the Commission reg­u­la­tion 1151/2012 per­tain­ing to PDO prod­ucts pro­hibits any direct or indi­rect use of a reg­is­tered name for com­mer­cial pur­poses. In the spe­cific case, the pro­tected term ​‘Kalamata’ had been used as a syn­onym of the vari­ety.

The Messenian pro­duc­ers also claimed that the Greek Ministry of Agriculture decree would enable olive pro­duc­ers any­where in the world to pro­mote their Kalamon olives under the brand name ​‘Kalamata.’

“With the min­is­te­r­ial order of 2018, the state itself had legal­ized olives of the Kalamon vari­ety pro­duced any­where in the world to be mar­keted as Kalamata olives,” Yiannis Pazios of SYMEPOP told Olive Oil Times. ​“We are sat­is­fied because our ini­tial claims about using the Kalamata name have been vin­di­cated by the court’s deci­sion.”

“At the same time, we are dis­ap­pointed because we have lost a lot of time await­ing the court’s judg­ment on a prod­uct that needs a pro­mo­tional strat­egy to be devised as soon as pos­si­ble,” he added. ​“The state and the inter­pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tions have so far failed to do so.”

Pazios also sug­gested that all par­ties set­tle on a com­monly accepted solu­tion.

“We believe that the court’s deci­sion pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity for all stake­hold­ers, pro­duc­ers, exporters, olive asso­ci­a­tions and the Greek state to find com­mon ground and come up with a national plan for our olives,” he said. ​“Of course, the solu­tion must be within the exist­ing reg­u­la­tory and sci­en­tific frame­work.”

Among other table olives vari­eties, Kalamon olives are grown in sev­eral regions of Greece with an aver­age annual pro­duc­tion of approx­i­mately 60,000 tons. This year’s yield, how­ever, is expected to fare lower at around 50,000 tons for the whole coun­try.

The coun­try’s largest pro­duc­ing region of Kalamon olives is Aetolia-Acarnania in west­ern Greece, with an annual pro­duc­tion usu­ally exceed­ing 25,000 tons.

Other sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­ers are the regions of Laconia and Fthiotida, with a har­vest rang­ing between 10,000 to 15,000 tons and 6,000 to 10,000 tons of olives, respec­tively, while Messenia’s pro­duc­tion totals 2,500 to 3,000 tons a year.

Around 80 per­cent of the coun­try’s Kalamon/Kalamata olive pro­duc­tion is exported with a value exceed­ing €200 mil­lion.

Non-Messenian pro­duc­ers of Kalamon olives protested the rul­ing of the State Council, claim­ing that the olive sec­tor of the coun­try would be severely impacted.

“We all have to under­stand that after the court’s deci­sion, no [table olive pro­duc­tion] plant in Greece or Europe can export olives under the name ​‘Kalamata Olives’ apart from [plants located in] Messenia,” five agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tions from around the coun­try said in a joint state­ment.

“Conversely, other non‑E.U. coun­tries (Egypt, Turkey, Morocco and Chile) can freely export their olives as ​‘Kalamata Olives,’” the state­ment fur­ther read.

The asso­ci­a­tions also asked the Ministry of Agriculture to step in and pro­vide a solu­tion to the Kalamata appel­la­tion issue.

“Otherwise, a gap of 80,000 tons in world mar­kets will be cov­ered by [Kalamon olives from] other coun­tries,” they said.

At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, the Greek national inter­pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion of table olives (DOEPEL) had not responded to a request from Olive Oil Times for com­ment on the court’s rul­ing.

• Ypaithros
• Agronews