Can Czechia reserve sausage for meat when the EU would not?

Czech producers of plant-based foods could lose four everyday product names from 1 January 2027. A draft amendment to the Ministry of Agriculture’s meat decree, now in interministerial consultation, reserves párek (frankfurter), klobása (sausage), salám (salami) and šunka (ham) for meat products made from meat or offal. Expats.cz reported the plan on 2 November, after the ČTK news agency collected reactions from the ministry, industry groups and producers on 29 October.

What the draft changes

The draft amends decree No. 69/2016 Coll., which sets requirements for meat, meat products and fishery products. It ties each of the four names to meat products formed into their customary shape and sets minimum composition values in a new table in annex 6. It also defines names for fish fillets and for egg products such as yolk, white and melanž, and requires packed minced meat to be kept at 4 °C or below. Goods already on the market could be sold until stocks run out. The draft cites the EU’s new meat-names regulation and the 2024 Protéines France judgment, and has to be notified to the European Commission under the EU technical-regulation procedure before adoption. The file was last updated on 20 October.

The ministry told ČTK that the draft sets requirements for existing names, bans no word as such and was prepared with producers. Agriculture minister Martin Šebestyán (SPD) said it gives producers the chance to stand out with original names. The Czech Food Federation, through Marek Zemánek, supports the change, and the Agrarian Chamber said on 15 October that it would bring consumers more information and producers more legal certainty. An earlier proposal was withdrawn under the previous minister, Marek Výborný.

The route the CJEU left open

In Protéines France (C-438/23), decided on 4 October 2024, the EU Court of Justice held that a member state without a legal name in place cannot generally ban customary or descriptive meat terms for foods containing plant protein. It also ruled out national thresholds for plant-protein content. A member state may, however, adopt a legal name: a name reserved by law for a food that meets set requirements. The Czech draft uses that second branch. Each of the four words becomes a legal name with a composition table, and a product that fails the table loses the word.

Regulation (EU) 2026/1739 amends the EU’s common market organisation rules to define “meat” and reserve 31 terms, among them steak, bacon, chicken and breast, for products derived from meat; foods made from cell and tissue cultures cannot use them either. Burger and sausage are not on the list, the UK government’s explanatory memorandum notes, and neither are frankfurter, salami or ham. The EU rules apply from 19 August 2029, and products already labelled may be sold until 19 August 2032. On the draft’s timetable, Czech restrictions on four terms the EU left open would be fully in force about 19 months before the EU list applies.

Who pays for the change

David Hůlka of the Czech Chamber of Alternative Proteins (ČKAP) told ČTK that firms face renaming, new packaging and fines of up to CZK 50 million for misleading consumers under the food act. Lada Gracová of Salve Natura, which has sold a smoked plant-based klobása for more than 20 years, said the company’s main concern is whether customers will still find it. Jana Pavelková of ProVeg Česko used “plant-based cylinder” (rostlinný váleček) to illustrate the names producers might be left with.

“Nobody standing at the shelf is wondering whether a soy sausage or lentil meatloaf contains meat. It says so on the packaging.”

Jana Pavelková, ProVeg Česko, to ČTK (FoodEdge translation)

The draft also raises a single-market question. Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 lets a food keep the name under which it is lawfully made and sold in its member state of production, with extra description where needed, and allows the host country to refuse that name only in exceptional cases where the food differs so much in composition or manufacture that consumers would be misled. A plant-based sausage made in Germany or Poland and sold in Czechia sits on that line. Under Directive (EU) 2015/1535, the Commission and other member states get a standstill period of at least three months to comment once the draft is notified.

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