Geographical Indications and Agri-Food Governance: Contestation, Continuity and Change in EU Trade Agreements

Geographical Indications (GIs) have become one of the European Union’s most prominent agri-food governance instruments. Originally developed as quality labels rooted in territorial identity and local production practices, they are now embedded across the EU’s external trade strategy and justified through broader narratives of sustainable development, rural resilience and food-system transformation. Yet their incorporation into international trade agreements frequently produces political effects far beyond their technical scope. While GI protection can facilitate cooperation in some negotiations, it has also provoked parliamentary backlash, mobilised producer and consumer groups, and contributed to the delay or derailment of agreements such as EU–Mercosur and EU–Australia. These contrasting outcomes raise a broader question for agri-food governance: when do GI provisions stabilise policy trajectories, and when do they instead activate contestation and intensify resistance to change? This paper analyses GIs as embedded contestation devices: regulatory instruments whose meaning and political impact depend not only on their legal design but also on how they redistribute benefits, invoke cultural and territorial identities and intersect with competing visions of agri-food reform. Bringing together literature in International Political Economy, food and agricultural policy and European integration, the paper argues that GIs crystallise deeper tensions within agri-food governance: between exceptionalist legacies and sustainability transitions; between producers seeking regulatory certainty and actors resisting perceived protectionism; and between the EU’s external regulatory ambitions and domestic or partner-country constraints. Empirically, the paper draws on documentary analysis, parliamentary debates, stakeholder submissions, and interview material from four emblematic cases: EU–Mercosur, CETA, EU–Australia and EU–Japan. Across these cases, it examines three interlinked mechanisms. First, legal design: provisions on coexistence rules, exceptions, transition periods, the number and sectoral distribution of protected products and the rigidity of GI language can expand or contract the number of veto players involved. Second, coalition structure: the strength, alignment and sectoral breadth of agricultural and agri-food coalitions shape the likelihood that GIs are framed as legitimate tools of sustainable territorial development or as obstacles to market access and policy reform. Third, discursive framing: media and parliamentary narratives (whether emphasising heritage and environmental stewardship or nationalism and disguised protectionism) mediate the visibility and politicisation of GI chapters, influencing whether they become focal points of public contention. Viewing GIs through this governance lens reveals why similar provisions can promote continuity in some settings but trigger political escalation in others. More broadly, the analysis contributes to debates on the dynamics of agri-food policy reform, the evolution of post-exceptionalist agricultural governance and the domestic legitimacy of EU regulatory power. It shows that GI chapters, though formally narrow, function as indicators of wider tensions surrounding sustainability transitions, distributive fairness, identity and state authority within Europe’s agri-food domain.