`Proposal to Go Light on Olive Oil Fraudsters in Italy is Rejected - Olive Oil Times
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Proposal to Go Light on Olive Oil Fraudsters in Italy is Rejected

By Ylenia Granitto
Mar. 2, 2016 14:33 UTC

The risk that coun­ter­feit­ing olive oil could have been ​‘decrim­i­nal­ized’ leav­ing offend­ers free to con­tinue their activ­ity has been averted.

In Montecitorio, Rome, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, the Agriculture and Justice Joint Committees approved a decree issu­ing sanc­tions for coun­ter­feit­ing of olive oil and its ori­gin, with the pro­posal, unan­i­mously approved, that gives the penal code preva­lence over the admin­is­tra­tive one.

We have raised these con­cerns from the begin­ning and we are sat­is­fied that the pro­tec­tion of our green gold turned out pos­i­tively.- Agriculture Committee Deputy Giuseppe L’Abbate

The two Committees pro­posed the mod­i­fi­ca­tion to a draft bill in light of numer­ous protests that rose against the attempt to lighten the penal­ties for those con­victed of fraud. Now, Italian grow­ers and pro­duc­ers hope the decree will be trans­posed by the gov­ern­ment into law.

Commercial fraud in Italy like mis­la­bel­ing olive oil as Italian when it has a dif­fer­ent ori­gin is a crim­i­nal offense con­demned by arti­cles 515 and 517 of penal code. But in the draft bill titled ​“Laying down rules on penal­ties for the vio­la­tion of the EU Regulation No 29/2012,” offend­ers who ​“do not respect the oblig­a­tion to indi­cate on the label and in the doc­u­ments the des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin, as well as the uneven des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin also using signs, fig­ures or other,” would have been pun­ished only with an admin­is­tra­tive fine.

The arti­cle goes on to intro­duce the admin­is­tra­tive offense when infor­ma­tion dis­played on prod­uct pack­ag­ing appears ​“in sub­sti­tu­tion of the des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or that can evoke another geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin than indi­cated,” or, in other words, when infor­ma­tion on the label mis­leads con­sumers into believ­ing that the prod­uct is Italian when, in fact, it is not.

The first change clar­i­fies that any admin­is­tra­tive actions would not pre­clude penal offenses nor inter­fere with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion through a clause ​“unless the act con­sti­tutes a crime” inserted in the penalty pro­vi­sions.

Agriculture Committee Deputy Giuseppe L’Abbate

The sec­ond change to the bill regards the rein­tro­duc­tion of a sus­pen­sion of up to six months for repeat offend­ers of com­mer­cial fraud dur­ing which com­pa­nies found for a sec­ond time to flout the rules must sus­pend com­mer­cial activ­ity.

“We have raised these con­cerns from the begin­ning and we are sat­is­fied that the pro­tec­tion of our green gold turned out pos­i­tively,” said the Five Star Movement deputy in the Agriculture Committee Giuseppe L’Abbate. ​“We request the Government to trans­pose as soon as pos­si­ble these indi­ca­tions within the final decree, to be issued by October, so it can be oper­a­tional before the next har­vest­ing sea­son.”

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