Former French President Charles de Gaulle warned years in the past: ”How are you going to govern a rustic which has 246 kinds of cheese?” Brussels ought to have listened.
French cheesemakers are rallying in opposition to a proposed EU recycling legislation, accusing Brussels of endangering one of many nation’s most prized conventional meals.
The draft legislation goals to section out single-use packaging in favor of recycled supplies. However French cheese producers concern the brand new regulation poses a menace to conventional packaging, resembling Camembert’s distinctive wood field.
French media have seized on the cheesemongers’ issues, accusing the EU of threatening France’s ”gastronomic treasures,” saying that sure cheeses would inevitably lose their ”geographic indication” seal and warning that as much as 2,000 jobs might be affected.
French Secretary of State for European Affairs Laurence Boone has joined the refrain of involved voices, warning Brussels that it dangers a PR catastrophe simply months earlier than the European election.
”If we wish to caricature Europe earlier than the elections, let’s trouble Camembert producers and their wood packaging,” Boone instructed POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook and a bunch of different reporters in an off-the-cuff dialog. ”It makes everybody leap up from their seats.”
A European Fee spokesperson stated the legislation wouldn’t forestall the usage of wood packaging, as feared by some in France’s cheese trade.
”Producers could must … enhance the recycling or reuse of the wood packing containers,” the spokesperson stated. “However that might additionally apply to producers of different varieties of packaging.”
However packaging producers warn that introducing a recycling system for wooden could be too costly and wish an exemption for Camembert packing containers — which they are saying are biodegradable and produce much less waste than plastic.
”Recycling is important, encouraging corporations to make use of recyclable packaging is important, however we additionally want somewhat pragmatic realism,” Boone stated.
The legislation nonetheless must be agreed by the European Parliament and nationwide governments, and the Fee spokesperson stated Brussels was engaged on ”resolving all of the excellent questions and points, in dialogue with the trade.”
It is not the primary time Brussels has confronted a PR difficulty over meals guidelines. For years, the EU didn’t shake off the concept that Brussels banned bananas that have been too ”flexible” — a declare that pro-EU campaigners discovered exhausting to counter within the lead as much as the U.Ok.’s Brexit referendum in 2016.