interpretation of the prohibition in the different countries of the Union, also making the importance of environmental protection in the eyes of the Union explicit to both companies and consumers and thus also enhancing the “pedagogical” function of the law. Even more significant is the impact of the inclusion of a number of business practices that can be traced back to the phenomenon of “environmentalism in appearance only” within the black list in Annex I of Directive 2005/29/EC, which makes any further assessment for the purpose of assessing their unlawfulness unnecessary, so much so that the same “Guidance on the interpretation and application of Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market”87 suggest that, when the interpreter has to analyze the conduct of an economic operator in order to assess possible deceptiveness, he should always check, as a first step, that that conduct is not on the black list. IV. “GREEN MARKS” AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR AN INCREASINGLY ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY TOURISM AND WINE INDUSTRY 4. Among the new blacklisted conducts, the most important is the first one, which considers per se illicit “displaying a sustainability label that is not based on a certification scheme or not established by public authorities”, whereby “sustainability label” is to be understood – according to the definition likewise introduced by the new Directive now approved – “any voluntary trust mark, quality mark or equivalent, either public or private, that aims to set apart and promote a product, a process or a business by reference to its environmental or social characteristics, or both, and excludes any mandatory label required under Union or national law”. At the very core of this definition there is in fact the acknowledgement that distinctive signs, above all trademark but also PDO and PDI, today are a real and proper communication tool, because they convey a message whose sender is the owner and whose recipients are all those who interface with its distinctive signs9. In this way, in particular for innovations (but also, and more generally, for the peculiar features of a product or service, and today primarily its 8 See the web page https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52021XC1229(05) 9 On the topic see C. Galli, Food and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comprehensive Approach, in Aa.Vv. Cibo e diritto. Una prospettiva comparata, vol. II, Rome, 2020, pp. 471-473, available at https://romatrepress.uniroma3.it/ wp-content/uploads/2020/06/19.food-gall.pdf. 113 WINE TOURISM AND SUSTAINABILITY: NEW “GREEN TRADEMARKS”
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