63. The representative of the European Communities, referring to Australia's question of whether non-geographical names could meet the definition of Article 22.1, said that in his delegation's view, nothing in that Article limited geographical indication protection to geographical names. Some examples were: "Vinho verde" for a Portuguese wine or "Basmati rice". On the question of whether it was legitimate to forbid use of the name of a country as a geographical indication, he said that the definition in Article 22.1 did not make that type of limitation. The EC did protect "Luxembourg" as part of a geographical indication on meat products. Any country name should be protectable as a geographical indication as long as the link of the product with a quality, reputation and characteristic was proven. It was up to every country to prove that case. Australia, for example, could seek protection for the name "Australia" as a geographical indication and show how all wines using that geographical indication had a link to a unique quality, reputation or other characteristic; he wondered, however, how there could be a single quality for Australian wine if Australia had some 90 geographical indications with different qualities. In reply to the question of how to demonstrate that the quality, reputation or other characteristic was essentially attributable to the territory, he said that each national administration would decide on the basis of evidence. Under the principle of territoriality, it would be the country of origin which would decide whether a term was a geographical indication or not; third countries could only deny that protection on the basis of Article 24.6. Regarding the stages of production or growing process which were to be carried out in the place referred to by the geographical indication, the reply would depend on the case: for wines for example, sometimes the bottling process needed to be done in the geographical area because transport of the bottles might affect the quality of the wine protected by the geographical indication. He reiterated that Regulation 753/2002 was to be discussed in the TBT Committee if so wished by Members. In this connection, it would appear to the EC delegation that the definition of "traditional expression" was still not very well understood. "Ruby" and "vintage" should be used with a wine bearing a geographical indication, so there was a distinction between a geographical indication and a traditional expression.
