Definition for chocolate still an EU sticking-point

Forget the row over the first president of the European Central Bank. A much longer-running EU dispute over how to define chocolate remains unresolved and there were no signs of progress at a meeting of national EU officials yesterday, an EU diplomat said.

"The deadlock continues," the diplomat told Reuters, adding that the issue had been discussed only briefly at the meeting.

The row has divided the bloc since Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined nearly 25 years ago. They, and more recent newcomers Sweden, Finland, Portugal and Austria, use vegetable fats as well as cocoa butter in chocolate manufacture.

The other eight EU members ban it, creating a possible trade barrier within the EU's single market.

The European Commission wants to make it easier to sell the vegetable fat chocolate containing vegetable fat throughout the union.

But France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Luxembourg are firmly against the use of vegetable fats.

Last autumn, the European Parliament agreed with a Commission proposal to allow the free circulation of chocolate containing up to five per cent vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter.

But that should only happen when a reliable, and as yet unavailable, way of checking vegetable oil content was in place, it added. Chocolate containing vegetable oils would have to labelled as such.

However, the EU executive has rejected most amendments.