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Recent years have seen a growing trend of countries ignoring previously established trade commitments and laws to impose regulations that restrict the use of common names at the behest of EU trade negotiators. On December 7, CCFN wrote to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Katherine Tai, emphasizing those concerns and laying out the countries where those developments pose particularly acute concerns. CCFN underscored that only the U.S. government can fully combat the present uneven global playing field dynamic as decisions on common name restrictions are made by official government trade negotiators.

From Mexico to Mercosur to Malaysia, CCFN detailed various examples of the EU using free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations to pressure other countries to adopt common name restrictions. It’s more important than ever that governments take a stand in defense of fair competition and stop the EU’s monopolization of common names.