Portugal’s leather law comes into effect
At the start of January, Portugal became the fifth European Union country to enact a law to protect leather’s identity.
Official documents set out mandatory leather authenticity rules, setting strict requirements for the use of the term ‘leather’. These make it clear that material manufacturers, finished product brands, retailers and others must not use the term ‘leather’ with qualifiers, prefixes or suffixes that contradict the intrinsic nature of leather.
Using terms such as ‘vegan’, ‘cactus’, ‘mushroom’, ‘synthetic’, ‘faux’, ‘artificial’, ‘PU’ in conjunction with the word ‘leather’ will now be regarded as deceptive practice in Portugal and will carry legal consequences, including fines and criminal prosecution.
COTANCE, the leather industry’s representative body in the European Union, said this legislation seeks to protect consumers and help them to make informed choices by making sure the product information they see is correct and truthful.
President of Portugal’s national leather industry body, APIC, Nuno Carvalho, said: “Our government acknowledges the strategic importance of leather and leather products for the Portuguese economy and the need to protect it from deceptive commercial practices.”
COTANCE president, Manuel Ríos, said he was delighted with this development in Portugal. He pointed out that the industry had held expectations for many years that the European Commission would “harmonise leather authenticity rules at EU level”. This happened for footwear and for textiles when arrangements for the EU internal market were being finalised in 1992, but not for leather.
Failure to do the same for leather at EU has led individual governments to bring in leather authenticity rules at national level, COTANCE said. In doing so, Portugal has followed Belgium, France, Spain and Italy, with Hungary likely to follow suit in the near future and a number of other countries already working towards the same end.
Image: Emídio Gonçalves Martins & Filhos, Lda
