In recent years there has been a seismic shift in the way the Portuguese see the world. If two decades ago we were all stuck in Chinese shops, today we look at Made in China as something negative and prefer to see Made in Portugal. We've even talked about how China is using personalised labels that say "made in PRC" as a way of combating the derogatory way in which its products are seen around the world.
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As a society, we are increasingly looking for clothes that are "Made in Portugal" and very - very - well. That should be the way forward. However, although we are a country that is very strong in textiles, we are not very strong in good, cheap clothes.
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In recent years, the Portuguese textile industry has had to adapt and specialise in order to survive. This adaptation was done - quite correctly - through value-added products (good, expensive products).
Now, when we talk about cheap t-shirts (2€, 3€, 5€), it doesn't seem at all compatible with the Portuguese model (and indeed it isn't).
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Since we can't fight the Asian countries (not just China, but also Bangladesh and India) on price, we don't have much choice but to continue importing goods from there.
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I'm not saying that it's not possible to have clothes made in Portugal or Europe. We actually have a small category with some clothes made in Portugal. The problem is - as you'd imagine - that it's much more expensive and not many people are interested in paying double or triple the price for it, even if it has higher quality and a Made in EU guarantee.
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And this leads to a problem that we've seen a lot of in recent years.
Nobody wants to pay for Made in Portugal clothes, but everyone WANTS Made in Portugal labels.
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We've seen lots of clothes on the market labelled Made in Portugal that we know aren't actually produced in Portugal.
To be clear, this is illegal. That's it, there's no turning back. If the ASAE inspects, the owners of these brands will have no escape because they will have no way of proving the origin of the brands. Not only that, but you could say that you are at the very least misleading your customers and - as a last resort - swindling them.
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But it doesn't have to be that way.
Before continuing, it is important to clarify that no lawyer has been consulted to confirm the information below. We cannot be held responsible for the information provided and we always advise you to consult a lawyer to ensure that you are not acting against the law.
According to EU regulations, it is not at all necessary for a garment to be entirely produced in the European Union (in one or more of its countries) for it to be considered made in the EU.
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The difficulty of determining the origin of a piece of clothing lies in the complexity of the supply chain (…) garments go through many manufacturing steps. The vast majority of these can be outside an EU country. Still, according to law, they can be classified as “made in the EU”.
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Looking at the production stages of a cotton T-shirt. All stages up to “the cloth being cut into pieces” can take place outside of the EU. Thus, the ‘last substantial transformation’ in this journey is when the pieces are sewn together. The same applies to a t-shirt made out of polyester.
It means that the cotton can be harvested in for example India. Or that the oil for making polyester can be extracted from Iran. The actual material – whether made out of cotton or polyester – can, according to the labelling rules, be produced outside of the EU, while still wearing a “made in the EU” tag. As long as the last part is made within the Union.
https://www.tekstilrevolutionen.dk/project/why-the-made-in-the-eu-label-can-be-misleading/
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In fact, what this text is telling us is that as long as the last transformation of the article (such as textile decoration) was carried out in European Union countries, we can label it with this information. It's always important to know where the item came from, the purchase price and how it was processed so that you don't run into any problems with the authorities.
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Will this regulation be transposed to the national market? We don't know. What we do know is that we can't find any legal regulations in Portugal that confirm or deny this information.
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Once again, we would like to point out that we are not lawyers and no lawyer has given legal advice on this information. We advise you to read the links and consult the right people to ensure that the information is correct.
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We don't like loopholes and that's why we like personalised labels with the information "Portuguese brand" or "printed in Portugal". However, as soon as you use embroidery or screen printing to make personalised T-shirts, you are in fact adding value and making a transformation to the garment of substantial value, so even the "made in EU" should be entitled to use.
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