Rewarding 15 years of Euromontana commitment to the topic of mountain products, the use of the optional quality term (OQT) “mountain product” was protected in November 2012 by the European Union with the (EU) regulation No 1151/2012. Following that, the European Commission adopted the delegated act (EU) No 665/2014 in June 2014. Since then, several countries have moved forward with the implementation of the OQT at the national level. The delegated act gave some room for manoeuvre to the Member States (MS) in implementing the term. Euromontana has monitored this process in twelve countries so far.

This study was first published in early 2016 and was updated at the beginning of 2017. This updates (November 2017) takes into account the feedback of the conference on “How to better valorise mountain food products? Launch of the European Charter for Mountain Quality Food Products” organised on 18^th October 2017 by Euromontana.