Geographical Indications and Territories with Specific Geographical Features in the EU: the Cases of Mountain and Island Areas

One of the goals of geographical indications in the EU is to contribute to rural development of remote and less-favoured areas. On the base of a rough estimation of the uptake of geographical indications in mountain and island areas of the EU, it can be concluded that indeed agricultural and food producers of such areas demonstrate a significantly higher use of geographical indication than average in the EU. However, the differences of geographical features reflect themselves in the fact that this use is not uniform: mountain stakeholders do rely more on geographical indications than islands ones. This is an indication that regional and/or rural policies need to be tailored to the local geographical, economic and social specificities of each area concerned.