One Size Fits all or Tailor-Made? Building Appropriate Certification
Systems for Geographical Indications in Southeast Asia
and legitimacy among customers and to
limit liability. In contrast, the literature
on the control of GIs is much more lim-
ited, with some works describing the
evolution of the governance of controls
in France {Marie-Vivien, 2017 #609},
the effect of the certification costs in It-
aly (Belletti et al. 2007), or the issue of
State intervention in controls in African
developing countries (Hughes 2009).
Other works aim to compare the gov-
ernance of GIs with that of other volun-
tary standards (e.g., ecofriendly labels)
by analyzing how the standard is set (its
content) rather than how it is controlled
(Marie-Vivien et al. 2014).
qualitative interviews conducted in
each country, this paper details for each
of the four countries: the GI system,
the control mechanisms implemented
for GIs (when these exist), the control
mechanisms implemented for vol-
untary/compulsory standards (when
no GI control exists), and the control
mechanisms in place for pilot GIs. Ulti-
mately, the paper aims to provide poli-
cymakers with relevant information on
how to build efficient but appropriate
GI control schemes at the country and
regional level.
The rest of the article is orga-
nized as follows: Section 2 describes
Third-party certification is now the GI control system in the EU; in
clearly expressed as the preferred op- Section 3, an analytical grid is used to
tion by the EU regulation on GIs and compare the GI control schemes in the
is mandatory in France. It is, therefore, four countries. Section 4 is dedicated to
important to understand how the need a discussion of the results of our survey.
for third-party certification is handled
in countries with a burgeoning GI A GI Control Model
system, and how it builds on control Advocated by the EU
mechanisms already in place for other
1.1 Towards third-party
voluntary standards.
The purpose of the paper is thus
to analyze the options for GI control in
four Asian countries—Thailand, Cam-
bodia, Vietnam, and Laos—and to
highlight the challenges faced by these
countries, which have very different
control capacities. We highlight the
close relationship between the diffusion
of the third-party certification model
for GI certification in Asian countries
and the shift in GI control in the EU
(with a specific focus on France) from
public bodies and collective producer
organizations towards third-party cer-
tification. Based on desk research and
certification
D
rawing largely on the tradition
of appellation of origin, born
in France in 1905 (Sylvander,
Casabianca, and Roncin 2008), GIs have
been homogeneously protected in the
EU since 1992 by Regulation 2081/92 on
the Protection of Geographical Indica-
tions (PGI) and Designations of Origin
(PDO) for Agricultural Products and
Foodstuffs. This is a two-tier system:
the PDO/PGI application is first pro-
cessed by the competent authority of the
Member State in which the geographical
area is located—e.g., the National Insti-
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