It isn't a case of there being regulation for the sake of it, but rather that the regulation has come into existence off the back of decades of what customers h

It isn't a case of there being regulation for the sake of it, but rather that the regulation has come into existence off the back of decades of what customers have expected from their produce. This is not about protectionism for producers, rather the protection of consumers. Noone is telling the consumers what to buy, merely telling them what they can expect when they buy. To take the example of wine, consumers of Bordeaux wines have accepted that since the classification of growths in 1855 there is a formalised structure and hierarchy of producers. One can know that wine from a First growth will be superior in quality to a lesser growth. From looking at the wine label, a customer immediately can tell that the wine will be of a certain quality without having to take a gamble. Codifying this into EU law allows no other winemaker within the EU to produce a wine with a label that claims the wine is a First Growth Bordeaux. This is great for consumers. The EU is not protecting producers in that anyone can make wine to compete with these Bordeaux wines but cannot 'piggyback' off of the 'brand' (for want of a better word) that Bordeaux has built for its producers.