The difficulty of reaching an agreement on the protection of GIs within the multilateral framework leads the European Union to promote GIs in its bilateral negotiations since 2010. This has led to the inclusion of lists of protected GIs in all trade agreements recently signed by the EU, such as EU-Korea (2012), EU-South Africa (2017), EU-Canada (2018) or EU-Japan (2019). Geographical indications defined in these lists are protected against misuse in partner markets. However, there are certain exceptions, such as trademarks registered prior to the signing of the agreement. Given the sensitivity of the GI issue in trade negotiations, the inclusion of GIs in trade agreements represents a non-negligible negotiating cost for the EU, which has to make concessions in return. In this context, the real benefits of including these GI lists in bilateral agreements should be questioned. Does it really allow European GI food exporters to improve their position in partner markets? Does it have an impact on the volume or price of exported products or on the number of exporting firms?

In this work, we estimate the impact of the inclusion of GIs in bilateral agreements on French exports of foodstuffs. We rely on a unique dataset of firms and products concerned by Geographical Indications (GIs) in the French agri-food industry (excluding wine) for 2012-2019, merged with firm-product-destination level data from French Customs and the French National Institute of Statistics. Controlling for market and firm characteristics, we compare the exports of GI firms with those of non-GI firms before and after the signing of the 13 agreements (25 destination countries) that include a list of GIs to be protected. We show that the protection of GIs in EU RTA helps French firms to reach new markets and to sell their products at higher price, but it depends on the level of protection provided by the agreement. To be effective, the recognition of GIs in trade agreements must be accompanied by monitoring and control by partner authorities in their markets.