The products of the territory of any contracting party imported into the territory of any other contracting party shall not be subject, directly, or indirectly, to internal taxes or other internal charges of any kind more than those applied, directly or indirectly, to like domestic products. Therefore, the French government was acting in accordance with these laws as stipulated above by the act. Therefore, they could have imposed extra taxes or levies on imported products from Australia or New Zealand.
In addition, the French government had some rights when they imposed some levies for when the Australians used the term Champagne on their products which they were exporting to France. Therefore, in a bid to protect its local products from unhealthy competition while still maintaining its product identity, the French government was acting in accordance with the WTO act. In addition, the word champagne is copyright to the French wine-making industry; therefore, use of it should attract some levies as its copyright and thus call calls for the protection of intellectual property rights. Therefore, the government acted in accordance with the WTO provisions by imposing a levy fee to protect its property rights and also by demanding payment of a prior annual license fee per exporting firm of US $10,000. In addition, the WTO calls for the protection of local goods from unhealthy completion and dumping effect, just as noted by WTO below.
“Nothing in this Article shall prevent any contracting party from imposing at any time on the importation of any product:
- A charge equivalent to an internal tax imposed consistently with paragraph 2 of Article III* in respect of the like domestic product or in respect of an article from which the imported product has been manufactured or produced in whole or in part;
- Any anti-dumping or countervailing duty applied consistently with the provisions of Article VI.”