The ‘Crowd-Out Effect’ of GI Provisions in EU FTAs: Cheeses Exported to South Korea

This chapter considers a specific issue of the impact of the European Union (‘EU’)’s Free Trade Agreements (‘FTAs’) on third countries, with a focus on geographical indications (‘GIs’). It assesses the hypothesis of the crowd-out effect—when an EU GI-protected product listed in the EU FTAs is the same as product names exported from athird country, the EU producer will exclude third-country exporters from using the same name. The chapter first explains the conditions and limitations of the crowd-out effect, then uses EU-South Korea FTA’s GI list which includes 19 cheese names to examine to what extent the crowd-out effect exists in a real world case. It concludes with key findings, future research directions, and the need for a systematic solution to the crowd-out effect.