No More ‘Made in Germany’ Labels?

The quality so long associated with the three little words ‘Made in Germany’ could soon become a thing of the past, destined to be swallowed up by the wide mouth of the European Union. The Financial Times Deutschland reported Monday that the European Commission plans to implement a new pan-European label bearing the words ‘Made in the European Union.’ The FTD report was based on an internal EU paper in which EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy the desire to establish the EU label as a mark of quality and use it to push forward domestic integration. Lamy also sees it as a way of fighting fraudulent claims of origin. The paper claimed that many companies wrongly label their products, and that many textiles which claim to be ‘Made in Germany’ or ‘Made in Italy’ in fact come from Thailand or India. Not surprisingly German industry is opposed to dispensing with its seal of quality. A legal expert for the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Henrike Vieregge, told the paper that the association would reject any suggestion to create an EU label law.