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Press arrow European Commission Grants Registration of Tokaj Wine to Hungary

"We can't accept that one EU member state was granted the registration and the other wasn't. Our mission is now to secure that the brand name 'Tokaj' gets acknowledged under the same conditions for both states," said Chovan.

He added that Slovakia has registered the brand-name in its national legislation since 2005, while Hungary has taken this measure only in July 2009. "We regret that the European Commission has adopted this approach, but we'll address the problem at the diplomatic level," claimed Chovan.

To this end, Chovan has sent a letter to European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel and asked for help regarding the registration of the 'Tokaj' brand name, which has been a bone of contention between the two countries for several years. The matter had seemingly been settled by the fact that the Hungarian and Slovak spellings for this type of wine differed. However, Hungary changed its spelling so that the distinction no longer existed.

Slovakia and Hungary have been unable to find any agreement on the issue, hence, the European Commission representatives have been invited to bilateral talks since 2008.

Source: TASR

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