The consultation the European Commission recently launched to gather the viewpoints of companies, organizations, experts and citizens regarding the problems connected to existent legal protection, in the internal market context, for authentic and territory-rooted non-agricultural products, as well as the benefits and risks of possible EU standardizing work to control and apply a future EU system to protect such products, could be an important occasion for finally arriving at protection for authentically natural ornamental stones extracted from and deeply rooted in the cultures of their various territories, also with potential fallout on the ability to protect the original nomenclatures tied to places of origin.
The consultation, in which it is possible to participate and respond by July 22, 2021, was launched by the Commission with the intent of collecting the comments of a vast number of stakeholders, i.e.: public authorities (federal/national, regional and local of member states and third countries); consumers (citizens and consumer organizations); producers (persons, companies – especially SME -, associations or organizations); law workers and exponents of academia; other interested parties.
As the Italian ornamental stone association, Confindustria Marmomacchine has already invited its members to respond to the questionnaire at the basis of the survey in order to take the largest possible number of comments to the European Commission showing the stone sector’s interest in pursuing this subject. The questionnaire is available in all official European Union languages.