Italian Parmesan producers have expressed "surprise" at Berlin's determination to allow cheap imitations of the cheese to be sold in Germany, an Italian financial daily reported on Wednesday.
Reporting on a case that got under way on Tuesday, Finanza e Mercati said the Italian Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium was confident that the European Court of Justice would eventually rule against Germany.
"However, we are saddened and in many ways surprised by Germany's attitude," said Consortium Director Leo Bertozzi.
The European Commission is suing Berlin for allowing German producers to sell a non-Italian cheese under the name 'Parmesan', arguing this violates European Union regulations on authentic food products.
The EU protected designation of origin (PDO) system means that only cheese made in Italy's Parma region and using specified production techniques can be labelled Parmigiano Reggiano, or Parmesan as it is known abroad.
Germany insists that 'parmesan' has become a generic term for grated hard cheese over the centuries, entirely unrelated to the specific Italian product.
But the Commission says if that were the case, then any cheese could be labelled as Parmesan, undermining the entire PDO system.
It wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to fine Berlin and order it to enforce the labelling system across Germany.
Proceedings opened in Brussels this week five years after the ECJ first held that the names Parmigiano Reggiano and Parmesan were synonymous, and that cheese sold under the latter name had to comply with EU regulations for the former.
The following year, the European Commission opened infraction proceedings against Germany, filing a complaint at the ECJ in 2004.
The court's advocate general, Jan Mazak, which the ECJ follows in the vast majority of cases, will deliver his advisory opinion by the end of June.
The ECJ is expected to reach its decision soon after.
Italy's Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium is optimistic that the court will decide in its favour.
Consortium director Bertozzi pointed out that "all EU governments who have filed representations in the case, including the Commission, have said that 'Parmesan' is a faithful translation of Parmigiano Reggiano".
Bertozzi added that a ruling in favour of Germany would open the floodgates to misleading advertising and deal a blow to consumer protection.
The Italian farmers organization Coldiretti said the court's ruling would be a "historic decision, important for safeguarding Italian products".
The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has become increasingly assertive in defending its product's name at an international level.
It scored a key legal victory five years ago when it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.
This was the fourth time in ten years that a US company had been forced to remove the label from its product.
In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American Parmesan denied permission to export worldwide and the US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Codex Alimentarius.
With origins in the 12th century, authentic Parmesan is a hard but crystal-grained, crumbly and tart-sweet cheese that adorns most pasta dishes and is prized as baby food. It is not cut but wedged open.
