Home to many geographical indications (GIs) meant to evoke specific reputational qualities of the products to which these designations relate, the European Union (EU) has played a prominent role in the promotion of GIs in the global economy. Amongst the various tools to which the EU has resorted in the attempt to make other countries familiar with indications of origin and keen on adopting a scheme of legal protection aligned to its internal sui generis regime, the present work aims at investigating the free trade agreements (FTAs) that the EU has been recently concluding with key trade partners. Through an analysis of major FTA provisions, this paper aims at inferring the specific adjustments that the EU has succeeded in negotiating in order to secure the protection of European GIs, whilst preserving the rights and obligations already existing in the legal orders of its various commercial partners. In particular, the found compromise between the uniqueness of the European GIs with the rights enjoyed by prior users of similar marks in the other jurisdictions will be functional to detect the mechanisms developed to ‘combine’ the different (if not opposing) instances and legal traditions of each trade partners.