European Union - New Zealand Free Trade Agreement Implementation

New Zealand concluded the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union (FTA) on 30 June 2022. The agreement entered into force on 1 May 2024.

As part of the negotiated outcome, New Zealand will provide geographical indication (GI) protection for a list of 1,976 EU GIs.

The FTA provides that GI protection will not prevent prior users of the terms “Gruyère” or “Parmesan” from continuing that use, provided that they were using those terms in good faith for a period of at least 5 years before the date of entry into force of the FTA.

We ran a process under which existing users of the terms “Gruyère” and “Parmesan” were able to provide us a statutory declaration confirming that they had used the term in good faith for that period.  Based on those declarations, we created lists of prior users (set out below) to share with the EU as noted in the FTA. A record of that process is available here.

Any continued use following entry into force must also be accompanied by a legible and visible indication of the geographical origin of the good concerned.

List of Prior Users of Gruyère

List of Prior Users of Parmesan