Today, the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Faton Thaçi, participated in the conference on “Building a Geographic Indicator for Sharri Cheese”, organized by the Embassy of France in Kosovo, in cooperation with the French Ministry of Agriculture, and by the international organization for agriculture in the Mediterranean area “CIHEAM – IAMM” and the Kosovar Institute of Intellectual Property Right held at the hotel “Nartel” in Prishtina.
In this conference participated the Ambassador of France in Kosovo, Didier Chabert, the General Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, Kapllan Halimi and representatives of CIHEAM – IAMM and IKPI organizations,
In the wake of this conference, Thaci priced this organization by saying, "I will first talk about the importance of intellectual property for the business community in Kosovo, and its importance for the society in general, same as for the Kosovo government's commitment to establishing an intellectual property system especially for industrial property which is the MTI responsibility. At the same time, the government of Kosovo, where we are governing this mandate, the priority over the priorities to us is economic growth in domestic product production, including the production of products from regions or special parts of Kosovo and that contain the origin of geographical indications or designations such as Sharri’s Cheese.
Protecting geographic origin means creating a more favorable business environment, enabling competition in manufacturing, processing and trade, improving the quality of life in rural areas and protecting the environment. Based on this, and the importance of intellectual property for the business community and society in general, the Government of Kosovo in behalf of its work program has paid particular attention on creating the necessary legal and technical infrastructure to protect the intellectual property, thus by adopting dozens laws and by-laws. In 2013, the Government of Kosovo adopted the law on Geographic Indicators TGJ, and traditional specialty (Decree- Law No. 555) – EU-related legislation (Regulation No. 1151/2012) has been in power since January 2016. According to this law, article 32, we will establish a commission of experts. Two administrative institutions, such as the Industrial Property Agency and the Copyright Office already have been set up, a special sector has been established within the Customs that deals with the Intellectual Property Rights Protection, including Courts and other institutions for the law enforcement. Industrial property violations is considered a criminal offense and is punishable under the Kosovo Criminal Code. Within the MTI, the Industrial Property Agency operates as body for registering request for geographical indications and designations of origin, and for both issues exists legal and technical infrastructure. In the agency we have only one application for registering a product according to geographical indications, and this application comes from our ally country, France ".
During this conference also were discussed other strategic issues that should be taken in order to protect Sharr's Cheese through a geographical indicator, and this way promote pastoral farming and rural development in this region.