Brussels, June 26 - Lovers of Italy's "pure chocolate" may find their favourite treat renamed or rebranded on shop shelves if European Union regulators win a lawsuit they filed on Thursday that accuses Rome of product discrimination.
The case, to be judged at the EU's highest court, revives memories of a quarter-century wrangle that dramatically altered Europe's definition of chocolate eight years ago.
In May 2000, EU governments passed a law allowing vegetable oils to be used in chocolate-making, defeating purists in countries like Belgium, France, Italy and Spain who argued that chocolate should only be made from cocoa butter.
Now, chocolate sold in the EU may contain up to five percent of six tropical oils, as long as the product carries a label saying "contains vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter" that appears somewhere on the wrapper.
For about five years now, European Commission regulators have battled with Italy over its label "cioccolato puro", or "pure chocolate", arguing that the name breaks EU law since it might encourage consumers to believe that rival chocolate bars containing legally permitted vegetable fats are inferior.
"You are not allowed to discriminate between products on the main label," one Commission official said.
"The Italians have a product called "pure chocolate", clearly against the rules since it's misleading to consumers."
Earlier this year, Italy offered to drop "pure chocolate" as a label provided it could use the alternative "pure cocoa butter chocolate", EU officials said. But since that change had still not happened, the Commission opted to take legal action instead.
Britain, backed by around six other countries, led the push for the EU to change its "chocolate law", to the fury of chocolate purists in the rest of the EU who blocked imports of foreign chocolate containing vegetable fat and banned their use.
They came up with various ways to describe British-style chocolate, including an infamous demand in 1985 to rename it "vegelate".
The six permitted tropical oils to replace cocoa butter are illipe, palm oil, sal, shea, kokum guri and mango kernel.