Atlantic vs Pacific: Where Sardines Dare

In 2001, a German supermarket chain thought to have broken the monopoly of Iberian producers over tinned sardines, by importing fish from Peru. It was a manna for the country's ailing canning industry, in search of new trade outlets. It also provided an additional option for German consumers, who now could find a different, lower-priced product on the shelves. But importers had not considered the intervention of customs officials, who implacably blocked Peruvian tinned sardines at the EU border: community regulations dictated that those were not really sardines, but a different product that could have tricked the unaware European consumer into thinking otherwise!
It was thus uncovered the fact that in Europe only the Atlantic species of sardine, Sardina pilchardus Walbaum, not coincidentally fished only by Spanish and Portuguese fishermen, can be properly called "sardine". Thus, the closely-related and even more similarly tasting Sardinops sagax of the Pacific, ironically classified as a different species by a fastidious German naturalist in the 1800s, had to be kept at bay.
Peru was thus left with no other route than suing the European Union before the WTO. If Berlin could not rule in its favor, Geneva just might. Peru argued that the two species are indeed different, but according to the internationally valid classifications contained in FAO's Codex alimentarius they belong to the same family, and so also the Pacific cousin had to be allowed into Europe as a normal sardine would. And what about consumer protection invoked by the European Commission in its defense? Even if it were true that the German consumer expects to find the traditional tasty sardine in the tin, it would suffice to put a label saying "Pacific sardine" so to distinguish between the two (the Commission wanted Latin zoological classification written on the cans, arising easy British sarcasm about the regulatory manias that Brussels eurocrats repeatedly fall prey to).

Geneva judges ruled that the European defense stank of protectionism and flew in the face of the avowed openness of our markets to Third World products. The EU thus lost the lawsuit. Peru's sardines were now free to be sold on the Rhine. But it did not happen, because Spanish fishermen must have found some other barrier to stave off competition from their Peruvian counterparts. I challenge you to find Peruvian sardines on European shelves. All you can find is Spanish, Portuguese, and Moroccan sardines (in fact Morocco sided with the EU in the WTO controversy). At this point, only the Brussels antitrust authority can give Peruvian fishermen a chance and truly liberalize a fishy market.