On 01 February 2022, Francesco Mattina took up his duties as President of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), the European Union (EU) agency responsible for granting plant variety rights, after being appointed to this role by the Council of the European Union on 20 December 2021.
Francesco Mattina, a 51-year-old Italian national specialised in EU law and in Intellectual Property law, joined the CPVO in 2013 after gaining international experience in private law firms as a partner and in the EU public sector as a senior legal advisor in industrial property at the EU Agency for Intellectual Property (EUIPO).
He joined the CPVO as Head of the Legal Unit in 2013 and was appointed Vice-President in 2017 until now. His new mandate has a duration of five years and can be renewed once.
Commenting on his appointment, Francesco Mattina said: “Becoming President of the CPVO means, above all, leading a team of excellent and dedicated professionals and ensuring the EU plant variety protection system keeps being seen as the most harmonised and performant in the world.”
“This requires looking at the future with an open mind and stepping up our cooperation with a wide range of stakeholders from the public and private sectors, in Brussels and across all EU Member States and beyond. We must make sure the EU plant variety protection system, in general, and the CPVO, in particular, take stock of important policy and regulatory developments and remain fit for purpose in the long run”, he added.
“Among several key policy files, the EU Green Deal’s objectives and the EU Intellectual Property action plan bear witness of the relevance of plant breeding and of plant variety protection for the European society. The revision of the basic regulation for Community Plant Variety Rights foreseen in 2023 and the ongoing debates on new plant-breeding techniques are therefore opportunities and challenges that I look forward to addressing during my mandate”, he concluded.
