THE LABELLING AND PACKAGING OF WINE 191 the Council was expected to adopt Community rules regarding quality wines produced in specified regions. In the early days of the common agricultural policy (CAP), so-called CMOs were created, aiming at managing the production and trade of most of the EU’s agricultural sector. 1.2. The developments after 1970 As it was mentioned above, it is not until entering into force of Regulation No 817/70 that the elements which enable each of the quality wines produced in specified regions to be recognised are finally listed and defined. The Community lawmaker provides for protecting producers from unfair competition and consumers from error and fraud, by reserving the expression “quality wine produced in a specified region” for wines which comply with Community provisions, while not excluding the use of traditional specific designations. What are we talking about when we talk of a wine with a protected geographical designation? Asking such question to any European consumer may seem unnecessary, since the average European consumer has been used to – since quite some time – identify a product, especially a wine product, from its label specifying the geographical origin, the quality, the vintage. For many Europeans it may even seem that it has always been so, but that is not at all true. It was article 12 of mentioned Regulation No 817/70 to set forth that QWPSR (or any specific expression traditionally used in the Member States to designate particular wines) were to be used only for wines which complied with the provisions of the Regulation. The European consumer was then made aware that wines produced within the Community were basically labelled according to two quality categories, table wines, on the one side, and QWPSR, on the other, with the latter belonging to the higher category. The labelling rules were, therefore, different, and the four wine-producing countries of the EEC (France, Italy, Germany and Luxembourg8) were forced to agree to harmonise regulations for various products, including wine, which were traditionally regulated on a national level. Nowadays, the EU wine regulations form a framework for the wine laws of the European states but, obviously, national wine laws have a much longer history than the EU wine regulations, so that the EU regulations have been designed to accommodate existing regulations of several Member States. In particular, the existing regulations concerning French wine, with its detailed 8 It was only during the 60s that limited Belgian wine production started.
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