System of quality labels in the European Union

Introduction. The paper deals with European Union schemes of Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed labels used in agricultural and food products sector. Materials and methods. Secondary data from the Database of Origin and Registration are used. Sample consists of 1,356 labels registered in this database to the 18th July 2016. The frequency of labels utilization is analysed according to country, type of label, and product classes. Results and discussion. The task of the research is to analyse the utilization of these labels in European Union market according to selected criteria including type of label registered in each country, and number of agricultural products and foodstuffs registered as quality labels in total. As results show, the highest number of product names is registered under PDO label followed with slight difference by PGI label. There are only minimum product names registered as TSG. Dominating country is Italy followed other Mediterranean countries like France, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Based on product class, the most common classes are Fruits, vegetables and cereals (for PGI, PDO), Cheeses (PDO) and Meat products (TSG, PGI). This is confirmed by Pearson's chi-square test of independence in order to determine if significant differences do exist between frequency of using the labels and mentioned criteria. It is confirmed weak dependence between number of product names registered as PDO, PGI and TSG and country of origin, middle strong dependence between type of label and product classes where the label is used, and strong dependence between country of origin and the most often registered product class. Conclusion. The PDO, PGI and TSG schemes bring benefits to consumers as well as to producers. Consumers are buying a product with specific value-adding qualities.